


Enchanted

by HuaFeiHua



Category: Shingeki no Kyojin | Attack on Titan
Genre: Adventure, Alternate Universe - Fairy Tale, Alternate Universe - Fantasy, Alternate Universe - Magic, Dark, Dreams and Nightmares, Established Relationship, Eventual Happy Ending, Fairy Tale Elements, Multi, No Smut, Not a Love Story, Witch Curses, actual angel christa, but only mentions i assure you, trigger warning - rape mentions
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-09-11
Updated: 2017-05-24
Packaged: 2018-08-14 05:00:48
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 35
Words: 75,429
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7999510
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/HuaFeiHua/pseuds/HuaFeiHua
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A witch is cursing people throughout the land, and when Armin gets lost on a hunting trip, he gets swept up in the quest to free the Cursed and kill the witch.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Lost

_**O** nce upon a time..._

Prince Armin walked his horse through the forest. He'd been on a hunting expedition, searching for a silver doe when he thought he saw her, splitting off from the party. Now it was twilight, and the sprites were coming out, sparkling in the shadows and creating an air of magic. In fact, the entire forest felt heavily magical in general. The greens were too deep a hue, the wind hummed softly instead of whispering. The flowers never bloomed, only budded and died.

He grew curious. Everything had a soothing, sleepy quality to it. It was as though the earth were deeply asleep in this one spot.

Armin adjusted and tightened his grip on his horse's reins, leading it on. He remembered a legend of a kingdom that fell into a hundred years' slumber.

He looked up towards the sky and saw a beautiful silver quarter moon in the sky, barely visible between the tangled boughs of the trees.

"Beautiful," he breathed, allowing his eyesight to adjust, and hundreds of small, faint stars appeared to him as well.

He lowered his sights again, and looked far ahead of him. The silhouette of a ruined castle was just barely visible in the depths of the forest.

Suddenly, Armin heard a sharp crack, like the snapping of a dry stick. He whipped around to see who was there.

It was a girl, around his age. She wore a red cloak and a simple wicker basket hung from her arm. She regarded him dangerously. A sleek brown wolf with piercing green eyes emerged from behind her and snarled at him. The girl spoke a few quiet words to it, and it settled.

"Wh-who a-are y-y-y-you," Armin stuttered, grasping the hilt of his sword with his free hand.

"My name is Mikasa," she calmly said, then motioned to the wolf at her feet. "This is my fiancé, Eren. He has been cursed by a witch to look like this. We're hunting for her, as we have for the last three years. Who are _you_?"

Armin clenched his left hand into a fist, looping his horse's reins over his head placing his right fist shakily over his heart and his left behind his back in a salute. He his voice trembled slightly from fear as he spoke. "My name is Prince Armin Arlert of the southern Kingdom Shiganshina. I was hunting for a silver doe when I was separated from my hunting party."

Eren slunk over to Armin as he spoke, and frightened, he began to shy away.

"Don't," Mikasa warned. "He's not going to bite. Just sniff. He does that with strangers."

And sniff he did. Eren's wet wolf nose tickled Armin's legs, and it made him nervous.

"He seems fine, Mikasa," the wolf finally said, and Armin screamed, dropping the salute.

" _HE CAN SPEAK_!"

Armin could've sworn Mikasa rolled her eyes at him, but it was too dark to tell for sure. "Well of course. Just because he's cursed doesn't mean he's not human, if you know what I'm saying," she told him.

Eren chuckled. "Nice to meet you, Armin," he said, giving him a friendly headbutt.

"N-n-nice t-to meet you, t-t-too," he stammered in response, then turned around and motioned to the castle in the distance. "I-I'm h-h-heading to that c-castle over there. W-would you l-like to come with me?"

Eren plodded back to Mikasa and rested at her feet as she responded with a glance in the direction of the castle. "It looks rather… suspicious; as though there's another Cursed in there. Even if the witch isn't there, we should check it out. Just in case there's clues to her whereabouts."

Armin adjusted his grip on his horse's reins, switching his grip from his right hand to his left. "Let's get going then?" He said, though it sounded more like a question than a statement.

Mikasa shook her head. "No, I think we should make camp for the night. The moon's well above our heads, and we should probably get some rest before going on an adventure."

"Oh, okay," Armin said, and began to tie his horse firmly to a nearby tree.

"You idiot, what are you doing?" Eren barked.

"Aren't we going to camp here for the night?" He nervously replied.

"Armin, look at your surroundings," Mikasa chided. "Rocks everywhere, uneven ground… Probably an anthill somewhere here too. You wouldn't want to sleep here, would you?"

Armin blushed. "No."

"Beginner's mistake, it's fine. We did that on our first night of adventuring," Eren explained, leaping on top of a nearby boulder. "There's a good area a few meters away, we should just go there."

Sheepishly, Armin untied his horse and led it over to the clearing Eren was referring to. It took him a little while to undo his knot, it was ridiculously complex and stupidly tight. By the time he even got to where the couple was, they'd built a small campfire and were cuddling next to it.

"So Armin, tell us a little more about yourself," Eren suddenly said as Armin plopped down across from them.

"Huh? Well, I'm seventeen years old, for starters. I wasn't to take the throne of Shiganshina for at least four years. Now that I'm gone, though, I'm not sure if I'll return. I've always wanted to be a traveling scholar," he told them. "What about you guys?"

"I'll go first," Eren said. "I too, am seventeen years old. I've been engaged to Mikasa for about four and a half years. It actually started out as an arranged marriage; our parents were good friends before we were born, and then they sort of parted ways. Lost touch, you know? Then, we ended up moving to the same town and getting in touch again. When our parents found out about the other one's kids, well. They couldn't resist, and they arranged a marriage."

"We didn't like it at first," Mikasa admitted. "We were about twelve at the time, and neither one of us was wild about the other gender in general."

"We got used to it, though," Eren laughed, then nuzzled Mikasa's torso. In response, she casually stroked his head, and Eren continued his story.

"So anyways, a while after Mikasa and I got engaged, I was playing in the woods behind my house, when I saw a will-o-the-wisp. I was curious about it, so I began to follow it. It led me to a strange area of the forest, and it was cool and dark, and there was this dark pool of water at the bottom of a hollow. All of a sudden, I felt incredibly thirsty, so I crept over to the edge of the pool, and I was about to take a drink when this old hag appeared behind me.

"She said, 'drink, child. Drink, and you will become more powerful than you could ever imagine.' " Eren rested his head on Mikasa's lap and didn't say anything for a little while. Armin became tempted to ask, but he continued on his own.

"I don't know why I wanted power. Or maybe I didn't want power, and I was just a stupid thirteen-year-old who wanted a drink of water. Either way, I drank from the pool, and after that, there's just a blank in my memory.

"Next thing I know, I'm back near the creek and Mikasa's hunched over me, screaming at me to wake up."

"Ah, I remember that," Mikasa recalled. "I was crying like mad and shaking you. You hadn't fully transformed into a wolf at that point, otherwise I don't think I would've even dared approach you." She then laughed softly and looked up, even though their view of the sky was limited by the trees.

The fire crackled and snapped as the three sat in comfortable silence for a few moments.

Mikasa's expression suddenly turned dark. "My parents vanished that day. I lived with Eren from that point on. It took a while to adjust to his new form as a wolf. Took him even longer before he learned to even speak again. Not long after _that_ , _Eren's_ parents vanished too. That's when we decided to go out and search for the old nag who had cursed him."

The entire story, Armin had been listening in awed silence. Then, a question popped into his head. "Didn't you say you didn't like the engagement at first? And even then, you only said you guys got used to it. So why are you acting so… couple-y?"

Eren laughed lightly. "That's a story for another day," he told Armin, and Mikasa nodded in agreement.

"We should get to sleep," she said, stretching out on the thick grass, using Eren as her pillow.

Armin lay down as well, cushioning his head with his arms and staring at the stars. As his eyelids grew heavy he stared at the constellations he knew well from childhood. Just before he left the world for slumber, a shooting star shot across the sky.

"Beautiful," he murmured before slipping away.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> *jazz hands*  
> yeah so like i didn't do this earlier because i've been having this weird problem that whatever note i put down on the first chapter just follows around the latest chapter... sooo yeah. hence why this is really late.  
> anyway, this is cross-posted from ff.net. i'm staggering the update days so it'll stay on the most recently updated page more often, but i've only got thirteen chapters so far anyway. yup.  
> so anyway, uhh... enjoy the show? feel free to comment, if that's what you're into, and as always, have a greaaat daaay~


	2. Castle

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Our trio get to the castle and Armin breaks off from his companions to explore on his own.

Mikasa slowly blinked open her eyes. Dappled sunlight danced across the forest floor, and she stared at it for a few moments, not wanting to wake up. She hugged Eren closer to her and tried to hold onto the soft drowsiness of sleep when she heard their new party member grunt audibly. She smiled. His muscles were probably stiff and sore from sleeping on the ground. She'd taken a while to get used to that, too.

Eren squirmed beneath her, signaling that he was awake and that she should get up too. "Good morning," Mikasa mumbled, pulling her knees up to her chest before sitting up, adjusting her legs so that they were crossed in front of her. She quickly ran her fingers through her matted, black hair, then adjusted her cloak around her neck.

"Good morning," Eren replied with a yawn. He then rested his head on her lap and stared intently at Armin, who looked like an absolute mess.

The right half of his face had a fine grey layer of dirt on it, and there were a few small, red bug bites visible on his arms. Dark circles were clear beneath his sunken eyes, and his shoulder length hair was filled with snags and snarls.

"Oh man, that was a rough night," Armin groaned, cracking his knuckles and sitting up.

"I'm not surprised," Mikasa gently said. "You're probably used to luxurious beds of feather down, not the forest floor with only your arm as a pillow. It would be hard on anyone given those circumstances." Absentmindedly, she reached into her basket and pulled out a short-haired brush and began running it through Eren's fur.

The basket had been something the two had travelled with since the beginning. At first, it carried around food and a few supplies, but as time went on and the food quickly disappeared, it was now mostly empty. All it held on a consistent basis these days was a set of flint and tinder, a water skin, Eren's fur brush, and a silver dagger.

Armin's stomach growled loudly, and he blushed slightly. "I don't suppose you have any food?"

Mikasa shook her head. She rarely felt hungry; it was a side effect of eating just whenever. She never even felt conventional hunger symptoms anymore. She never felt pangs of hunger in her stomach, nor did it rumble any longer. She only remembered her need for food when her fingers trembled when she worked and her legs felt weak.

"I'm sorry Armin, but if you're going to leave princely life behind, you're going to have to get used to a lot of things other than the ground at night. Less food, less sleep, less showers… the only thing you'll probably get more of out here will be sick," she told him.

Armin quietly nodded, accepting his fate. He then turned to face the castle in the distance. "We should go."

Mikasa felt Eren shift his weight on her lap, his little bean toes digging into her legs as he looked into the depths of the forest. He then leapt off and began trotting through the undergrowth.

"Then let's go," he bluntly said, turning around for a brief moment.

Mikasa nodded seriously, and began following him through the undergrowth. Armin suddenly began panicking.

"My horse! He's _gone_ ," he complained, but was shut off by a baleful stare from Mikasa.

"You probably tied him up too loosely and he escaped during the night. You wouldn't be able to keep him anyways if you were going to stay with us; he'd be of no use."

Armin hung his head slightly and began plodding after the couple. No one really spoke, but he began to pepper them with questions, trying to ease the awkwardness.

"How often do you eat anyways? Have you ever gotten sick from eating wild foods? Are you guys ever scared that Eren's curse is permanent?"

Mikasa sighed and pulled the hood of her cloak up over her hair, then clutched at the front of it, as though there were no clasp keeping it from flying away.

"We eat every few days, and yes, we have gotten sick from eating wild foods. It's mostly Mikasa though, since wolves have tougher immune systems," Eren replied. Neither one answered the third one.

Truth be told, the final question had crossed their mind several times, but Mikasa had always brushed it off. Many legends said those cursed had until their twenties until it was permanent, and if they took that at face value, they had time a-plenty to find and kill the witch. Though, they'd been wandering around for years, never finding anything more than fading traces that magic wielders, let alone abusers, even existed.

However, they _had_ sometimes met others who were affected by a witch's curse, though not always directly. The first of which had been a young girl named Ilse, not much older than Mikasa had been at the time, who spent night and day making shirts of stinging nettle. She and Eren had only even met her because they'd heard rumors about her being a witch while passing through a village, since she never spoke, only wrote. As it turned out, Ilse's brothers were some of the Cursed. They were swans all days of the year but one, and to break it, she had to make them those shirts of nettle.

Mikasa remembered being skeptical about the whole thing at the time, but since the project had been close to done when they first met, Eren had convinced her to stick around, just to see if it would really work.

She had very nearly backed out of it when Ilse was accused of being a witch and nearly burned on a stake. She remembered dragging Eren away from the flames when half a dozen swans had flown down, and Ilse threw the shirts onto them. Then the swans transformed before their eyes into humans. What happened after that, Mikasa did not know, since she managed to haul Eren away and had begun running away, but what she had seen was enough. She had confirmation that curses could be reversed.

"Uh, Mikasa?" Armin's voice snapped her out of her memories. He pointed down at her feet. "You stepped in deer scat. I tried to warn you, but you weren't listening."

Mikasa looked down at her boot and cursed aloud at the matted green-brown mass now grossly attached to the bottom. Armin's eyes grew wide as saucers.

"What? Never heard someone say the word s-" she started, but Armin cut her off.

"Such coarse speech isn't appropriate for ladies," he scolded. "Besides, cursing makes a person sound dumber than they really are. It gives the impression that they're ineloquent."

Eren gave him a slightly sarcastic look. "Maybe for nobles, but we _commoners_ tend to not care about what others think of them," he said as Mikasa wiped the bottom of her shoe on the grass, scraping as much of the poop off as she could without touching it. She gave it a few stomps, then pressed forward.

The foliage grew thicker, and the trio travelled in stony silence as the castle rapidly drew closer. Soon, the ferns were choked out by thick, black brambles, making it difficult to continue.

Mikasa began to remove the knife from her basket when Armin stepped forward, unsheathing a sword.

"Leave it to me, guys," he said, and began hacking away at the thorns, forging a path.

Mikasa lifted her gaze upwards, looking almost mournfully at the castle ahead of them. They were on a well-trodden path made of dirt, but overcome with the weeds.

"Hey Armin, tell us a story," she heard Eren say, and she focused on the road ahead.

"Oh, geez. I don't really have any, to be honest with you," he admitted. "I didn't really have _friends_ as a child, so there was no one to go on adventures with. I had a favorite maid, though, named Lynne. She told me all about the grand legends with the damsel in distress and knights in shining armor." Armin laughed as he cut through a particularly thick vine. He didn't notice at all how instead of clogging the road, it simply dissipated within the instant.

Armin's voice turned wistful. "I used to think it would be fun to go on an epic quest to save a lady from a dragon. Never would I have ever guessed there's not a lot of glamour behind the scenes."

"Not to mention these things take time," Eren agreed, speeding up so that he was heel with Armin. "So what's your motive?"

"Motive?" The blond boy sounded surprised. "You mean other than the obvious point of having an adventure I only ever see in stories?"

Eren nodded. "Is there anything you plan on getting out of this? A prince and princess always fall in love after breaking the spell. Perhaps that's what you're after?" he teased.

Mikasa noticed that Armin's next swing didn't have quite the same amount of vigor as the others had.

"I-I'm not looking for love. It's not important to me," he said, then quickly changed the subject. "What makes you think there's a Cursed in this castle?"

Mikasa absently observed her surroundings. "Magical thorns, for one thing. Don't tell me you didn't notice how they just hiss and fizzle away the moment you cut them from the stem? Also, it's a castle in the middle of nowhere. Seems pretty suspicious, doesn't it?"

Armin cut through a vine and finally saw what she was talking about. They really did just dissipate the moment they left the main body. He peered ahead, and saw the grand entrance doors to the castle and shivered. It looked so gloomy.

Eren twisted through the remaining vines and bounded up to the door.

"Hey, you're almost there!"

Armin nodded at him and hacked through the last of the vines. He sheathed his sword and began running to the doors with Mikasa.

Eren scratched at the doors, then looked up at Mikasa with pleading puppy eyes. "I miss hands," he said as she opened the door for him.

Armin walked into the entrance hall and was immediately in awe, nevermind the fact that the doors were unlocked.

Curved twin staircases led up to a second floor and were covered by a dusty, dark red carpet. Ragged tapestries hung on the walls, looming over everyone and casting an ominous tone over the room. The few stained glass windows tinted the whole room with blues and greens. The rest of the windows were broken, allowing vines to grow all along the walls of the room, even to the point where they crawled along the floor and helped decay the carpet beneath their feet.

He took a few steps in order to better acquaint himself with his surroundings. Sure, he'd seen entrance halls before, he was a prince after all, but something about this one just captured his attention just right that it was practically magical.

Perhaps it was the wild vibe the broken windows and vines gave the feel that drew him in. Perhaps it was the overall abandoned look. Or perhaps it was even the strange aura of magic that surrounded the entire castle that happened to enchant him. Whatever it was, the castle had captivated him, and he began to wander off on his own, not noticing where he walked as he lost himself in the fabulous corridors and endless rooms of knickknacks and oddities.

Almost in a trance, Armin found himself walking up a spiral staircase in a tower. He didn't question it, for for once in his lifetime, he didn't think.

He found himself at a door at the top, reaching for the doorknob, but he caught himself before he actually touched it.

He debated actually entering the room for a few moments before going for it.

The room was softly lit, its windows partially covered by drapes and candles softly shone with an ethereal blue glow. A petite blonde girl lay on the bed, curtained off from the world but still somewhat visible.

Almost reverently, Armin walked over to her. Carefully, he leaned his weight on the mattress and stared at the girl. Her pale blonde hair was in a loose bun that cushioned her head; bangs hid much of her face. Gently, he brushed the hair out of the way and saw her face clearly.

She looked calm, peaceful. Attractive, even. She had a wonky nose, but he didn't care. He wanted to touch her, but he felt that if he did, she'd shatter. She looked like a porcelain doll, lying there in the bed as motionless as could be.

He took her pulse, and it was there, clear and strong. But her breaths were tiny and shallow, and her eyes didn't move beneath her eyelids. Deciding she was asleep, Armin pinched her cheek, but when she didn't respond, he slapped her.

She didn't even flinch.

He sat down on the bed in a huff and stared at her expressionless face.

"Princess locked in a tower far, far, away," he muttered. "Only true love's kiss could break the spell."

Armin's eyes widened slightly as he contemplated the possibilities.

"Well, it's worth a shot, I guess."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i swear the chapters get longer after a while. actually, this one is technically up to par with my current chapter length standards; at least 2k a chapter, but before, when i first started writing this, my standards were at least 1k words a chapter. so i swear they do start to get longer, and i'm trying to make my standards even higher. but until then i'm sorry that the chapters are so short.  
> anyway, i hope you've been enjoying these. last two chapters. yup. great stuff to be basing your tastes off of. leave your thoughts in the comments, if that's what you're into, and as always, have a greaaaat daaaay~


	3. Bones

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Mystery girl wakes up.

Annie was trapped underwater. She was aware of everything around her, and while she wanted to respond, she felt trapped at the bottom of a lake. Unable to do anything, forced to submit to whatever desires anyone who entered the room had for her.

This one seemed different though. She couldn't see their face, but their voice was gentle and so were their actions. They seemed to have no desire to violate her, unlike some of those who entered her prison.

She was first able to move the moment she felt something touch her lips. Her eyes moved rapidly beneath her eyelids, and she could feel her heartbeat for the first time in ages. A part of her wanted to curl up into the fetal position as she was kissed and feel the warmth in her heart grow. She hadn't known it was was covered in ice until it started to melt.

The other part of her wanted to bring whoever this was closer to her, to allow them to do as they pleased and please her all the while. Never before had she experienced these feelings before, but she understood them in an instant; it was lust.

The kiss began to end, and she stirred for the first time in what felt like an eternity.

Whoever had entered made a small sound of surprise as she slowly rolled over into her side. Her limbs felt like lead beneath the blankets. Her eyes fluttered open, her normally sharp eyes were fuzzy and disoriented.

A blond boy with wide blue eyes slowly came into focus, his expression one of pure shock. Annie made odd purring noises and struggled to sit up, and his expression turned to confusion, then flushed bright red with embarrassment and turned away.

She didn't even realize what was wrong until he picked up her dress from the floor and tossed it in front of her. Her own cheeks grew warm and her clarity of mind spiked. In a tizzy, she clumsily pulled the dress over her head and hoped no stray breezes tugged at the hem later.

The boy suddenly seemed to remember his manners and bowed slightly to her. "I am Armin Arlert from Shiganshina of the southern kingdoms. Pleasure to meet you miss…?"

Annie didn't reply. She had never heard of a prince Armin Arlert, yet he must be prince or even king of Shiganshina judging from his clothing. "What _year_ is this," she slowly asked. Her throat hurt as she spoke, and her voice was raspy.

Armin bit his lip. "Fourteen-twenty-four," he said, and Annie's heart stopped dead for a moment.

She took a step back. Then another, and another, and then she heard the sharp crack of something breaking beneath her feet. She looked down, and her blood chilled when she saw bleached white bones lying broken on the floor. She suddenly felt very sick.

She'd been sleeping for over a hundred years. The fourteenth century had passed without her even knowing it. Everyone she knew was dead. Her head was spinning and her feet were wandering around in circles and her legs were giving out beneath her. Her breathing suddenly became very shallow and controlled. Panic began to overtake her and she started to hyperventilate. _Curses don't last a hundred years, right? The enchanter can't live_ that _long, right?_

Armin seemed sense her discombobulation and tentatively placed his hand on her shoulder. Annie broke out in a sweat and she held her head in her hands. She felt Armin awkwardly bring her closer to him, but she pushed him forcefully away.

"Are you okay?" he asked, alarmed.

 _Yes, I'm fine, I see the bones of my friends all the time_ , she snapped in her head. His concern helped, though, and she slowly began to calm down. Her breathing became more rhythmic and she was no longer tipsy.

"Better?" Armin shyly asked, and while she still felt sick, she nodded at him.

He took a deep breath. "Let's start this over," he said and extended a hand out to her. "My name is Armin Arlert, prince of Shiganshina of the southern kingdoms. And you are?"

Annie clumsily curtsied back at him, forcing herself to ignore the crunch of the bones getting crushed beneath her feet. "Annie Leonhardt, duchess of Utopia. Pleasure to meet you."

She noticed his hand fall back to his side, but elected to ignore it.

Suddenly, he lightly snorted, a crazed smile coming across his face.

"What's so funny?" she wondered aloud, and his smile widened.

"I never thought true love's kiss would work," he laughed, but it faded away when Annie gave him a dark glare. "What? Pretty sure it's been done before, considering the, uh…" He trailed off, not sure how to put it.

The blonde scowled slightly. "Never a kiss. Only rape," she spat.

Armin flinched at her words, but then reached a hand out to her. "I'm going on an adventure. Want to come?"

She was surprised at his offer, but she didn't let it show on her face. She didn't take his hand, but she shifted on her feet and began walking towards the door. She turned to face him and gave him a very slight smile. "Of course. How else do you expect me to find out if it were coincidence or true love that woke me up?"

Armin let his hand drop to his side again, probably finally realizing that Annie wasn't one who enjoyed being touched.

Annie slowly descended the stairs, her legs stiff from disuse. Armin followed her quietly, offering her help multiple times, all of which she rejected.

" _Arrrmiiiinnn_ ," she eventually heard echoing through the halls. The voices were interchangeably a boy's and a girl's, and she wondered who they were.

They followed the voices through the castle, Annie easily navigating the twists and turns as though it were the back of her hand. She chewed her tongue slightly throughout the trip, put off by the dilapidated state her home was in. It was an eerie, almost haunting feel, to be walking through the decaying halls she'd once roamed in their prime.

The echos drew nearer, and Armin began to respond to them.

" _Heeerreee_ ," he yelled.

Annie heard footsteps in their direction and the sound of nails scrabbling on the stone floor. A girl in a red cloak and a large brown wolf rounded the corner, and she shrank away from them.

The wolf looked at her face, then fell on the floor laughing. "Holy _crap_ , look at that _nose_ ," he wheezed, and Annie could feel her nostrils flaring.

" _Eren_ ," the cloaked girl scolded, but it was too late. Annie was already marching towards the creature and just as he realized what she was doing, she gave him a hefty kick to the side.

He yelped, and Annie expressionlessly kicked him again, and would have kicked him a third time if she hadn't been tackled by the cloaked girl. Annie felt her airway getting cut off and she was forced to her knees as the cloaked girl held her in a headlock.

"Do _not_ abuse my fiancé _again, got that_?" she hissed into Annie's ear. Desperate for air, Annie nodded and felt the pressure on her windpipe ease.

"Didn't know people were into beastiality these days," Annie muttered, hardly able to speak anymore.

"Annie, don't be rude," she heard Armin quietly say. She didn't reply, but slowly got up. Black spots danced in front of her eyes, but she ignored them.

She heard Armin take a deep, calming breath. "Well, let's try this again. Annie, this is Mikasa and Eren. Mikasa, Eren, this is Annie; she was the one under the curse."

"Aww, was it true love's kiss that broke the spell," Eren teased, and Annie was really starting to dislike this creature, whatever it was.

Armin rolled his eyes at him, but she noticed a faint blush coloring his cheeks anyway.

 _Whatever_ , she thought. _It's not important._

"Shouldn't there be some sort of guard? You know, to make it harder to break the curse?" Armin asked.

Mikasa and Eren exchanged glances. "Most of the time, it's just time itself. Our case, Ilse's case, so on and so forth. But there's no clear time limit on Annie's curse, as far as I can see, so we might end up having to fight, I dunno, a dragon or something," Mikasa said.

 _Dragon? Dragon, dragon, dragon. I_ know _someone mentioned something about a dragon before this_ , Annie found herself thinking when the floor began to rumble and shake. Everyone looked out the lone window in the room, and Annie felt a chill go down her spine.

"Speak of the devil," Armin whispered.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> hey nerds. can i call you guys my nerds? idk. i think i'll just call y'all nerds just this once.   
> anyway. hope you're enjoying it so far. personally i don't think the next chapter is really one to get to hyped up about. i know that the summary is just "mystery girl wakes up" and then you get a name as the first thing you see.  
> also there are character tags.  
> but like. i like doing chapter summaries. and then i got too lazy after a while. yeah.  
> feel free to leave your thoughts in the comments, if that's what you're into, and as always, have a greaaat daaaay~~


	4. Fight or Flight

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> I mean there's a dragon.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> *slides in doing a really sick guitar solo*  
> this chapter isn't as good as it's hyped up to beeeeeeee!!!!  
> *slides off of stage and breaks knee on floor*  
> have fun!

Eren watched Mikasa immediately leap into action as soon as they all saw the great, lumbering beast outside the window. She robbed a decorative suit of armor of its sword, dropped her basket and began sprinting towards the door. Soon after, Armin pulled himself out of whatever trance he'd gotten himself into and followed her, his own sword in hand. Eren wished he could have helped, but he wasn't of much use without opposable thumbs.

"I miss hands," he sighed for the thousandth time.

He picked up Mikasa's basket in his jaws and slowly trotted through the halls to the outside with Annie to watch the fight. It wasn't particularly memorable, but perhaps that was because he wasn't involved in it.

He'd gotten into many a dogfight with wild animals when Mikasa would have been at a disadvantage, and while after a while they all blended together in his memory, living a fight was far more entertaining than watching it from afar. Even if it was terrifying in the moment, he loved the aftermath of the adrenaline rushes and how they made him aware of everything around him.

Eren sighed again, sitting down outside on the doorstep of the castle with Annie as Armin and Mikasa charged out towards the dragon.

"Pretty day outside, isn't it," he cheerily said to the blonde, putting down the basket as they watched the battle. Annie didn't reply, but Eren didn't mind; what was he to expect from someone he had been making fun of not ten minutes ago?

They silently watched Mikasa gracefully lunged and dodged in a dangerous dance around the dragon as Armin tried to follow suit. It was clear he was used to practice spars, where everything had rules and routine to it, and not the spur-of-the-moment life-and-death of an actual fight.

A glint of light reflected into his eyes, and he recoiled slightly. "Who on this earth is shining the sun into my eyes," he complained as he shifted positions. He took a better look at what was happening in the fight, and his eyes widened.

" _Mikasa!_ " he suddenly yelled, bolting forward and into the thorns towards the dragon.

The sharp, prickly vines picked at his fur, pulling it off in stinging clumps as he tore through the vegetation. The occasional thorn worked its way into the pads of his feet, but by this point in his life, he'd grown so sure-footed he could pull it out with his teeth as he ran, as long as it was in the front.

The dragon had begun getting the best of Mikasa and Armin, and they were being forced backwards, closer and closer to a trench. Eren didn't want to think about it as he ran, should he jinx their luck and they fell to their doom.

He burst through the plants covered in scratches and thorns caught all through his coat, but none of that mattered now. He feared for his fiancée's life at the moment. And Armin's too, he seemed like a good kid, but he losing Mikasa scared him far more than losing some blond stranger he'd met last night.

Pillars of fire now whooshed past him as the dragon noticed the tiny wolf running past its toes. He flinched at the heat, sure his fur was getting singed, but he kept going. He was getting closer to the edge now, and as he just as he dodged past the dragon's front legs, it suddenly froze and collapsed to the ground. A green mist pulled itself from the beast's chest, and with a horrendous shriek that could wake the dead, it sped off, leaving the decaying body behind it.

Eren skidded to a stop in front of Mikasa and turned around and watched the dragon decay in fast-forward, turning to nothing but a pile of rotting flesh and steaming bones within minutes.

The sword slipped from Mikasa's grip, and Eren could hear it clatter to the floor. Armin sheathed his own sword, probably reminded by the clatter.

" _Woah_ ," was the only thing anyone said, and it came from Armin.

Eren finally broke his trance, shaking his head and seeing that the brambles were sublimating into sparkles, noticed that his hind legs no longer had fresh waves of pain coming for them. He assumed the thorns in his pads had left with the ones on the vine and the remaining pain was just from the cuts they left.

Annie's castle was not restored, however. The castle had naturally deteriorated over the century or so it had been abandoned, so it made sense when Eren thought about it.

Annie picked the hem of her dress up from the ground slightly and ran towards the trio, lightly picking up the basket and running with it as she did so. "What just happened?" she demanded, though instead of addressing the more knowledgeable Eren and Mikasa, she asked Armin.

He put his hands in the air in surrender. "I have no idea, but that might've been the witch in a last-ditch effort to escape."

"Probably off to curse another poor soul," Eren added.

Annie's face darkened slightly and she walked right up to Armin, to the point where if Eren hadn't known any better, he would have thought they were about to kiss. "Well you're going after her, aren't you?"

"Well, uh, yeah, why?"

"I'm coming with you," Annie firmly said as she finally took a step back.

Armin threw a look at the girl and her wolf, and they half nodded, half shrugged in response.

"Well no one's stopping you, but you should probably put some underwear on," he finally advised and Annie's face flushed bright red before she slapped him quite loudly on the cheek.

Eren decided to pretend he never saw or heard those two interactions.

" _Anyway_ ," Mikasa said, returning to the subject on hand. "I think that dragon might have been the witch."

Armin made an agreeing face. "I guess that would make sense, with that green banshee just pulling itself grossly out of the thing's chest and all. If it were a witch that happened to have transfigured itself, then that must mean wherever that gas cloud is heading is where she has a base or something."

"So we head out now?" Annie queried.

"Well, it'd be best if we had her scent to track first," Mikasa cut in and gestured to Eren. "Theoretically-"

"Hypothetically," Armin automatically corrected, but Mikasa ignored him.

" _Theoretically_ , Eren could use the scent of decaying witch-dragon bones to track down the real witch."

Everyone looked down at Eren, who was tempted to roll his eyes a little bit. "Going, going," he said, bounding over to the fragile pile of bones that seemed to already be turning to dust. He took a few deep sniffs from the pile of bones, but couldn't find any trail to follow. He turned back to his human companions and shrugged as well as a wolf could.

"Nothing?" Armin asked, bewildered.

"Nothing," Eren confirmed.

Everyone sighed, no longer sure what to do. Following the gas-cloud-banshee thing was out of the question; who knew what twists and turns it made in the air that would lead them on to red herring after red herring.

A softly glowing silver doe gracefully leapt over a bush and into the clearing the adventurers were in. Eren heard Armin gasp, and he assumed that this was the doe he had seen that had gotten him lost while hunting.

The doe walked among the quartet, gently sniffing each member. Then it turned heel and bounded, lighter than air, back into the woods, where its soft glow cut through the dark and illuminated a path. It did not look back.

Eren whistled the best he could. "That was the doe that got you lost on your hunting trip, wasn't it, Armin?"

The blond boy nodded faintly. "Yeah, that was her, all right. You think it's a sign or something?"

Eren and Mikasa nodded.

"A magical creature leads you to a good fate once? That's luck. You see the same magical creature leading you again? That's destiny," Mikasa solemnly told him.

"But is it meant for all of us, or just me?" Armin countered.

"Well we all saw it, shouldn't it be obvious? It's meant for everyone here," Annie suddenly interjected. "I'm assuming only Armin spotted the doe when he was on his hunting trip, but we can also assume that since he's a prince, he was with a huge hunting party. If only he saw it, and only he joined the adventure, then that must mean that since all four of us could see the doe this time, then it's leading all four of us on a new adventure."


	5. Illumination

They didn't see the doe again, but her footsteps left patches of moonlight on the path and led the way. The forest she led them through was dark and spooky, nothing at all like the one that had led Armin to Eren and Mikasa. The trees were black, their crackly brown leaves nearly non-existent. The wind howled eerily, and the whispers of the sprites carried through it.

The sprites were clear, too. They flickered, fading in and out of sight as the party trod lightly the path laid out for them. Their laughter was distinctly bell-like, and it rang through their heads day in and day out.

Eventually, the tracks stopped right in front of a black, wrought iron gate. It was unlocked, but no one really wanted to enter, for there was a gloomy looking castle in it. Frankly though, Armin expected there to be piles of dead leaves everywhere, but strangely enough, the courtyard was absolutely spotless.

The windows of the castle glowed a soft yellow-orange, so that in itself looked quite inviting. But the black night covered them with fear, seeping into the depths of their minds, scaring them out of their wits. Something seemed creepy about this entire estate, and no one wanted to find out what it was.

But as it was, fate had brought them here, or so they assumed, and there was no fighting that.

"Let's go then," Armin gulped, undoing the latch for the gate and stepping inside.

The girls walked in without expression. Eren stuck tight to Mikasa, often growing at nothing.

Armin felt thorns catch on his pants, though they felt not like the enchanted ones back at Annie's castle, but rather small ones like the ones found on rosebushes. He stopped for a moment and squatted down, feeling around for the stem of a flower, and upon finding one, picked it, hoping to see it better by the light inside the castle.

When the quartet actually made it to the front doors, no one wanted to open the doors.

They were saved the worry, though, when a young woman with a rat's nest of a head of hair and thick, squarish glasses opened the door for them and grinned. "Humans! How lovely! Come on in, the kettle's on the stove and the tea should be ready any minute now, heaven knows how much the master loves his tea," she jovially said and ushered them in.

"Ah, a cursed beast, or a tame wolf?" she asked Mikasa when she spotted Eren.

"Cursed _human_ , thank you very much," Eren himself snapped, which was probably a very bad idea.

The woman's eyes gleamed with a special type of madness. "Ah, so he speaks? Would you mind if I asked you a few questions? Did a few experiments?"

"Questions are fine, experiments are _not_ ," he firmly replied as he padded down the hall the woman led them through.

"Excuse me, but… who _are_ you should be our first priority," Mikasa butted in.

The woman suddenly smacked herself upside the head. "I totally forgot! My name is Hange, and I work here. The Master used to be some of the Cursed, same with all the other servants here, then well, it's not my story to be telling, to be honest," she told them as she led them into a quaint dining hall.

A small, cheerful looking, ginger-haired lady was animatedly chatting away to an equally small, equally peeved looking man with raven hair as they dined.

The ginger lady suddenly stopped talking and pointed out the visitors to the man, who gave them a baleful stare.

"Have a seat, have a seat," Hange chirruped, guiding the teens to the dinner table, seemingly unaware of the glare the man was giving them. She then scurried off to the kitchen, assumedly to tend to the teakettle.

Mikasa and the man locked eyes and had a particularly intense staring contest. The tension was so thick, Armin was sure if he had access to a knife he could physically cut through it.

Mikasa must have lost whatever telepathic battle (if any) that took place, because after about a minute, she softly snorted and bowed her head.

Hange soon came out with teacups and placed it in front of each of the people ("I'm sorry, wolfie, but we can't have you drinking from the teacups; I don't think that's sanitary."

("My name is Eren, dammit.")) and poured everyone a bit of fragrant tea.

"Cursed beast, or tame wolf?" the ginger lady politely asked, trying to ease the awkwardness.

"Cursed _human_ , dammit," Eren replied for himself in an annoyed tone.

The man with raven hair finally spoke. "Ah, I see what you're here for now. You want to break that curse of yours.

"Looking at the blonde girl, I'd say she'd just gotten her own curse removed as well. Judging from how the blond guy likes to stick around her, I'd say he kissed her and it broke.

"You, the wolf and red riding hood, I'm assuming you've tried that already, judging by your closeness and attachment to each other."

The couple blinked at each other and Armin could see they'd never seriously contemplated that option.

"Before you dipshits even try it, it's probably not going to work," the raven man snapped, then sighed over a sip of tea. "Hange, start on the piano."

The servant almost dropped the teakettle as she squealed in excitement and rushed over to the piano and started banging loudly on the keys, singing out of tune:

" _We've heard the tales since we were young, heard the songs that have been-_ "

" _Hange_ ," the master scolded, and the servant squealed.

"Sorry Levi, I got carried away," she quickly said.

Levi scowled and Hange began playing the piano at a more reasonable energy level than before. The ginger-haired lady smiled contentedly, looking like she were about to laugh.

" _We're told the tales since we were young, heard the songs that have been sung about an evil spell._

" _Someone beautiful is cursed, we feel sad through every verse until a kiss and all is well._

" _The message that no one can see is clearer to someone like me_ …"

He continued singing, leaving the teenagers in his midst very confused as to what this was all about.

"The story's old, we know it well," Hange told him towards the end. "About the wretched evil spell, and I think they get the point. The power to break the curse is inside themselves."

"Sir, but what does this have to do with you?" Armin asked. "Why are you and Hange and this ginger lady living in these creepy woods in an otherwise deserted castle?"

"Oh, pardon me, my name is Petra. We forgot to introduce ourselves, but that's not important right now," the ginger lady apologized.

"I was a Cursed, just like you. I was the beast and Hange and many others were my servants. Though Hange was as annoying as a teapot as she is as a human, I enjoyed my solitude. I really missed hands though; I couldn't clean without opposable thumbs," Levi said.

Eren gave the man a sympathetic look, pawing at the tablecloth for emphasis.

"I'd've stayed like that and been more or less perfectly content if Hange hadn't decided to activate her nerd mode and research the old fairy tales to see if anything matched what I was going through and lo and behold, she found _Beauty and the Beast_."

"So I went on an _incredible journey_ throughout the land, searching far and wide, for Levi's Beauty~" Hange cut in, resulting in a death glare from Levi. She continued anyway.

"You've probably heard the legends, but surprisingly, it wasn't love that broke the curse."

"My mom's a fairy," Petra explained. "Hence why I'm so short. I just kind of bibbity-boppity-booed him back into a human, as well as his servants. Now I just come over for tea and to chat every few days."

Armin felt his jaw drop. "So… the true love's kiss of the legends isn't true?"

Hange shrugged. "Probably not. Though it's not really stated in the song, the kiss serves as more of a placebo effect. The victim _thinks_ it's going to work, so they end up breaking the curse themselves by believing it will work. 'True love's kiss' was never really necessary in the first place."

"Care to explain this 'bippity-boppity-boo' stuff more in-depth, Miss Petra?" Mikasa asked, a somewhat sarcastic tone present in her words.

"Would you believe me if I said pushed him into a rosebush that I made grow incredibly large, made him go temporarily blind, then lock myself in a tower only accessible through a door with a doorknob, thus making him believe that he needed hands so badly that he turned himself into a human again so I could grant him his eyesight back?"

The teenagers exchanged confused looks.

"Uh, _no_ ," Eren simply replied.

"Well the rosebush part was right, sort of," Levi dryly said, taking a sip of tea.

"Yep. My specialty in magic is plants. Wanna know why we live in a more or less dead forest in the middle of nowhere? I have to draw my magic from somewhere in order to use it on something else; it's the law of equivalent exchange. I took life from those trees and after finding out that Levi has a cleaning fetish ("I do _not_ have a cleaning fetish!" Levi snarled.) turned his castle into a mess so awful it would have taken him ages to clean up without opposable thumbs."

"Such magic. Very wow," Eren said, and Armin had the strangest urge to slap him or ask Petra to make him smaller and fluffier.

"So basically what you're saying is that we just need to _believe_ that the spell is going to break, and it'll just break on its own?" Annie asked.

"So the small blonde does speak!" Hange exclaimed. "But to answer your question, that only works to an extent. For example, I'm pretty sure if Eren were to quote-unquote 'believe' that his curse will be broken and just that, it won't work."

"Well why not?" Eren complained.

"Because I can tell you don't really believe that. For the placebo effect to work properly, you must wholeheartedly believe in it. Hence why most placebo effects only work when the subject is unaware that they're being deceived."

"So for Eren to break his own curse he has to do whatever he originally thought would break the curse or find another thing to believe in," Armin realized and Hange nodded approvingly at him.

"Exactly. Kind of a bummer in a sense, but amazing scientifically," she said then suddenly burst into laughter. "I just realized I only know Eren's name and that's because he kept complaining about how I didn't know it."

The faces of the human teenagers all flushed slightly and introduced themselves over their tea.

Eren banged his head against the table, causing everyone's cups to rattle and spill, if the drinker hadn't had much yet. "This is nice and all, but _how_ are we going to find the witch then?"

"Well actually, funny story, but I have an enchanted map I made with Petra that keeps track of all the magical at least partial-humans on it. It helps her track down her relatives from time to time when they go absolutely insane and need to be calmed down, but I _suppose_ that it could work on the witch and those she's cursed, with some modification of course."

The company was stone silent.

"I have _no_ words for this," Eren dumbly said.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i'm sorry that i'm so bad at responding to comments, but i assure you, i read them all and i love every single one of them. i should ♫♪ hire a samurai ♫♪ to respond to them for me. because i keep forgetting. //i'm sorry.


	6. Map

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Honestly if these titles don't explain everything I'm not sure what to say.

After tea, Hange led the original trio away from the dinner table, leaving Annie behind on Petra's request.

The map she showed them was indeed grand. It was pinned to the wall and covered with dozens upon dozens of bright blips of various colors. The map itself was beautifully detailed, showing the details of the mountain, every little path, creek, and hamlet.

"There's so many magical beings in the land," Armin said in a hushed voice, but Hange waved him off.

"Well of course, what did you expect? You're in the fairy realm now."

" _What_?" the trio cried.

Hange looked at the three weirdly. "You, I understand why you're unaware," she said to Armin, then looked at Eren and Mikasa. "But didn't you tell us in your tragic backstory that you've been at this for _years_? How have you _not_ noticed that you were in the fairy realm?"

The couple looked at a loss.

"The thought just never occurred to us andㅡ" Mikasa began, but Hange held up a hand, silencing her.

"It's fine that you didn't know. You know now, that's all that matters. Anyway, let's take a look at this map I have," she said, turning their attention to the piece of paper on the wall.

Every few seconds, the rainbow blips would flicker. Some would reappear a little ways away from where they had been, some remained totally still, and a couple seemed to be teleporting all around the land.

"It's very nice, but with so many spots on the map, how are we supposed to make use of it?" Armin asked.

Hange was ahead of him though, taking the map down and almost violently clearing out a space on a nearby table covered in books in order to lay it down. She then closed her eyes and took on a focused expression and swept her hand over the map as she mouthed a few words.

Many of the little dots faded away into the background, but they weren't gone. The remaining dots pulsed with a strange light and slowly turned into a dark shade of maroon. Armin assumed they represented those affected with a curse from the witch.

"Since when were _you_ magical?" Eren demanded when Hange was done.

"Eren, this castle is in the fairy realm. It would be crazy if someone here _didn't_ learn magic along the way. Besides, all I did was single out one specific type of magical being, calm down. I didn't save the world or anything, sheesh."

Everyone turned their attention back to the map and inspected it.

"Hmm," Hange said as she thoughtfully tapped her chin. "That's interesting," she murmured, then pointed at a castle on the map.

"Here's where we are. But, there looks like there's more than one Cursed in here, which is odd, since hypothetically, Eren should be the only one with a Curse." She placed her hand on that spot on the map, closed her eyes, and muttered a few more words, and soon the entire map was zoomed in to show only the castle.

She was indeed right about the multiple Cursed in the castle; there were three maroon blips blinking at them. There were no names labelling them, but it wasn't too hard to deduce the first two, considering the locations of them.

There was Annie, still down in the dining room, Eren up in the tower with them, but the third dot was a mystery. It was also in the map tower, but there was no way to tell if it was Armin, Hange, or Mikasa being represented by it.

"Huh? Annie's still cursed?" Armin marvelled, but he wasn't the only one.

"Well it appears so, though she might just have some lingering magic that's fading away from her original curse that's causing her to show up on our map," Hange replied, the gears in her mind were already turning, trying to think of a plausible explanation. "But as for that third dot, I honestly can't tell if it's supposed to be you or Mikasa. I might have to run some tests to see which one it is but…" She trailed off and began to study Mikasa.

"Mikasa, have you ever wondered how you've survived this long?"

This caught the other girl off guard. "Well, I have Eren with me, we hunt and scrape byㅡ"

"When was the last time you ate?" Hange interrupted.

"Downstairs, ma'ㅡ"

"Correction, when was the last time you had a _meal_. Sipping a small amount of tea from a teacup does not count as a meal."

Mikasa lowered her gaze. "A couple weeks, but I eat snippets every few days."

"When was the last time you had a drink of water, besides today's tea?"

"Three days, ma'am."

Hange regarded her curiously and for a few moments, no one said or did anything. Then, out of the blue, Hange lunged over the table at Mikasa, her hands in fists in a clear attack.

Mikasa looked startled for a moment, but quick as a whip, she stepped out of the way and grabbed Hange by the forearm and spun her into a precarious stack of books, which toppled and fell onto her.

"That's gotta hurt," Eren commented, wincing even though he only witnessed it.

Hange, on the other hand, didn't seem to mind a bit. In fact, when she emerged from the pile of books, she had a maniacal grin on her face. She pointed at Mikasa and said, "You, dear, are one of the Cursed."

Mikasa's eyes widened even more. "I don't understand. I've never met the witch, as far as I can recall," she admitted.

"No regular mortal can go that long and still be in a fighting condition, first of all. Second off, you're freakishly strong. I weigh sixty kilos and you swung me without a problem into a pile of books. Even if you weren't starved, that's exceptionally strong for anyone," Hange explained, digging herself out of the mess of books that covered her.

"I'm thinking you'd be a Mulan parallel. _Mulan_ is an ancient Oriental legend about a girl who helped win a war disguised as a boy. If my thinking is correct, the witch might have cursed you perhaps indirectly in hopes that you'd go out and join a war effort or even be drafted, which would leave Eren alone, which would make it easier for her to capture him. Why on earth she would want _that_ to happen, though, is currently beyond me.

"Perhaps Eren has some special importance to her grand scheme of things, but what a wolf from _Little Red Riding Hood_ could possibly be used for is a mystery for now.

"As for your lack of a need for nourishment, that might be a side effect of the specific Curse the witch casted upon you, or perhaps it's simply a side effect of being Cursed in general. However, not needing food and drink for extended periods of time, quick reflexes, and an overall sharp survival instinct seem like something that a Mulan parallel would have, so it is likely it's just part of your specific Curse."

"What if what's making Annie show up on the map isn't just a few lingering traces? Does that mean she has a more subtle curse in the background affecting her, or does that just mean that curses never fully go away?" Armin concernedly asked.

Hange looked at him sympathetically. "Well, if we want the answer to that, I'll probably have to run a few tests on her, which means she'd have to stick around here for a few days."

Eren pawed at the ground. "But we don't _have_ a few days! Well, technically we do, but I'd _prefer_ we return to the hunt as soon as humanly possible."

"But Annie…! What if we don't tell her and she stays with us, only to have a secondary curse start to manifest itself what would we do then," Armin panicked, but it was Hange who answered his question with a wave of the hand and:

"It's okay, kiddos. Annie can hang around here with us as you guys adventure around the land investigating whatever dots we may find on the map." She gasped. "This could be like your home base or something! I can do all the research and you guys can come back and report back all the information you find and it'll be great andㅡ"

"Yes, Hange. We get it, we can use this place as our base. But what about Levi? Isn't he the master of the castle; wouldn't he overrule your decision? He seems awfully anti-social in my opinion," Eren cut in.

"Pah, I'm sure he won't mind," Hange loftily replied. "Anyway, back to the subject at hand: the map and your next location."

Everyone gathered around the map again, which had been forgotten in Hange's rambles. The scientist/magician cast yet another spell on the map, zooming out so that much of the surrounding areas were visible as well.

They all inspected the map and the sparsely scattered maroon dots for a few minutes before someone spotted a pair of dots in a nearby village.

Eren was so excited about moving on with the whole quest that he almost leapt out the window into the road, but Hange caught him (Not by the tail, mind you) before he could.

"Hold on there, Eren, but it's dark outside. You guys should stay here at least for the night. Get a solid meal in your bellies, take a good bath and clean up before getting a good night's sleep. Goodness knows you and your fiancée need it after all those years on the road," she chided, closing the window and putting Eren back down on the ground.

He made puppy eyes at her, but Mikasa took it from there and scooped him up into her arms. "Thank you, ma'am, for the offer. Eren should be fine with just a brushing, but I'd be glad to bathe if you showed me to a room."

"I'm a servant; I'd be delighted to, Mikasa."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i wrote this chapter literally months ago. exactly _three_ months ago, to be exact. man. i remember i wrote this entire chapter in two days because i had run out of queue and i give myself deadlines for when i post my stuff. usually it's once a week, but this is getting cross-posted from ff.net, and i'm staggering the days so that it stays on the front longer.   
>  yeah. sorry it ended kind of weirdly, though.  
> yup. hope y'all enjoyed another installment of this fic. yeah!!


	7. Nightmare

_"_ Hey there, little red riding hood; you sure are lookin' good. You're everything a big bad wolf could want. _"_

_Music played eerily in the background as Eren walked through a sun-dappled forest, alone. Sprites and wisps whispered and chatted amongst themselves in their own language, hovering and weaving through the air. A few circled around his head, laughing their high-pitched laughs._

_He crouched down as though he were a cat, stalking his prey, and carefully tiptoed through the underbrush to a place where there were no patches of sunlight to be seen on the ground._

_He felt the soft, crumbling dirt between his toes, the velvety softness of the peat moss on his pads. He could smell the delicious, earthy scent of decaying twigs, of the fresh mountain air. A chilly breeze tugged at his fur and nipped at his nose, causing him to dig his toes into the already loose dirt._

Critch. Crunch. Critch. Crunch. _Eren's ears perked up._

Critch. Crunch. Critch. Crunch. _What was that sound?_

Critch. Crunch. Critch. Crunch. _It sounded like the crushing of dirt beneath shoes._

_From his peripherals he saw something out of the ordinaryㅡ someone in a red cloak walking the forest path._

_It was a girl. And quite a fine-looking one in his opinion, too. He could feel a predatory growl forming in his chest, begging to rise to his throat and be voiced. But he hushed it. If he was going to get anything from this girl, she couldn't know what he was._

_He got down to the floor and twisted and rolled in the dirt, and when he was done, he was a human. Out of habit, he struggled to remember what he used to look like. Green eyes. Messy brown hair. But that was all he could ever recall._

_He snarled at himself and brushed the dirt off his clothes. He never knew where the clothes came from when he became human again, but he wasn't complaining._

_He glanced behind him and saw a small patch of wildflowers. Girls liked flowers, right? Right. He delicately picked a few sprigs of a small, yellow flower whose name he forgotㅡ primrose, was it? It didn't matter. He picked a few of them and leaned against a tree near the path and waited for the girl to come to him._

_"_ Little red riding hood, I don't think little big girls should go walking in these spooky old woods alone. _"_

_The girl looked at him with a curious face. Her large, grey eyes were full of a childlike innocence._

_Oh, he was going to hate taking that innocence out of her face. It made her look so beautiful, so appealing, so_ enchanting _. But alas, he was going to anyway._

_"Sweets for the sweet," he purred, giving her his best charming, crooked smile that often made girls swoon as he offered her the flowers._

_With wide eyes, she cautiously accepted them. Now was his chance, he could grab her by the arm andㅡ_

_"What big eyes you have, my darling. The kind that drive wolves_ mad _. Why don't I walk with you for a while, just to see that you won't get chased?" he found himself asking._

_The girl didn't say anything, but she nodded. Clutching the flowers he had given her in her right hand with a simple wicker basket, she offered him her left._

_He gladly took it, thinking that this time would be all too easy, that this was his golden opportunity._

_Strangely enough, he found himself not taking it._

_The cloaked girl led him through a meandering path through the woods, swinging their clasped hands back and forth slightly as they walked. Neither one of them said anything, but she smiled at him after a while._

_His heart was hammering away at his chest for ages afterwards._

_They soon reached a cottage in the heart of the woods, but something seemed off. It smelled of flesh decay, of the metallic stench of rotting blood. The roses were covered in reddish brown stains, there wasn't a light on in the entire house. The window up front was broken, fragments of sparkling glass littered the ground in front of it._

_The girl beside him trembled visibly beside him, her hand squeezing his so hard he was sure his fingers would break. The basket slipped out of her other hand as did the flowers. The contents of the basket tumbled out, revealing a simple tinderbox, a waterskin, a brush, and a silver dagger._

_He squeezed her hand back in an effort to reassure her. He wasn't sure why he was doing this. He could have taken her already and been satisfied._

_"_ What a big heart I have: the better to love you with. Little red riding hood, even bad wolves can be good."

_The sprites and wisps had long gone silent at this point, but that line whispered itself to his mind over and over again. His ears twitched in irritation; why wasn't he leading her away? Why was he following her as she nervously opened the already slightly ajar front door?_

_She stepped inside and her grip on his hand instantly slipped away. Curious, he opened the door even wider and entered the cottage._

_Blood._

_The stench of it rotting filled his nose._

_Blood._

_A steady drip-drip of it falling into a puddle._

Blood.

_Bright crimson splashes of it all over the wall._

**_Blood._ **

_He opened his mouth to breathe, only to get a breath full of the thick taste of it._

**Blood.**

_It soaked through his thin leather shoes, getting between his toes, drying up and crusting and feeling icky overall._

_There in the corner was another hooded figure, this one in white, though it was covered it dark brown-red stains all over. It was hunched over a raw and mangled corpse, pulling out broken segments of the small intestine and ravenously devouring it. It dug into the fleshier bits as well, snacking heartily on the meat that it gnawed off the cadaver's ribs, it's spongy brown lungs, and when the figure reached the heart, a fresh spurt of blood gushed forth, spilling everywhere._

_The girl clung to his arm, and he could feel his shirt grow damp from her silent tears. His own cheeks were streaked with tears, though he didn't notice it._

Run.

_He didn't even say it out loud, but he pushed the girl outside. His heart was racing so fast he wouldn't have realized it existed if it hadn't caused an ache in his sternum from all its pounding. Adrenaline flooded his head, he could no longer think straight, and his legs had to move. He was filled with the overwhelming urge to charge and to beat the hooded figure to death, but his legs refused to budge._

_Something beneath the hood gleamed and grinned and he began to quake with fear. A shot was pulled from a pocket and he was about to bolt for the door when his arm was grabbed and he couldn't escape no matter how hard he struggled and all he could do now was claw at the groundㅡ_

Eren's eyes shot open and he leapt to his feet, his heart pounding. He was on a bed. It was soft. It was dry.

He sniffed his feet. They didn't smell like blood. They weren't human feet.

Someone under the covers next to him was softly breathing. It was rhythmic and gentle. It was calming, and Eren tried to match his own breathing to its rhythm.

When he sufficiently calmed down, he looked out the window overlooking the bed on which he sat. The moon was still waxing; it was nearly full.

The pale light of the moon softly lit the features of the one sleeping in front of him. It was Mikasa, of course. What else had he been expecting.

He noisily sniffed her and licked her cheek over and over again, quietly whining until her eyes fluttered open.

"Eren?" she rasped. "It's probably three in the morning; did something happen?"

"I had another nightmare," he whimpered.

Mikasa sat up in bed and stroked his head. "Tell me about it, then."

The moon was beginning to set by the time he finished telling her about it. She listened intently, murmuring words of reassurance when his voice dropped away until he finished.

"That's a new one," she mused. "Did you see who was under the hood?"

Eren shook his head. "No, but something seemed wrong about them. It's hard to explain, but they _seemed_ familiar in one way, but their actions screamed familiarity in another way."

The grey light of dawn began to light up their room, and it sent a chill down Eren's spine.

They were staying in a room at the top of a tower. It had been snug and cozy last night with a few dying embers in a fireplace keeping them warm and rugs all over the place to make the room feel fuzzy and comforting. The bookshelves had been filled with books and odd trinkets.

But now it looked like something had gone on a rampage, absolutely destroying the room. The floor was covered with a strange black grit, the rugs in tatters all over the floor. At least one bookshelf was toppled over, and the books and odd trinkets were scattered all around the room. The fire, as expected, was long cold and dead.

There was nothing new in the room besides the grit, and nothing removed as far as they could see. But the fact that they had slept through what looked like a tornado had struck could mean two things: since they were both rather light sleepers, then the vandal had done all this silently. Or, perhaps they had been drugged or enchanted so that they slept much heavier than usual. Neither idea seemed very comforting.

Eren jumped down from the bed and sniffed the grit on the floor. Beams of sunlight were beginning to shine into the room and when it hit the black dust, the dust fizzled out into nothing.

Eren and Mikasa exchanged glances. They'd seen this before when they were with Armin, when they were slicing through the thorns in front of Annie's castle. If there was any connection between the two, then as it seemed, this was the witch's doing.

"Let's go find Armin and see if he got anything similar," Mikasa whispered, tiptoeing out of bed and grabbing her cloak. She didn't bother to change into daywear, since the clothes Hange had left for her last night didn't appeal to her and her regular clothes were out for a wash. Together they slipped out of the room and down the stairs in search of Armin.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> soooooooooooo you might have noticed that the marco tag is gone. or maybe you didn't. either way, i had this idea last night that would restructure a pretty messy part of the story and tighten it up as a whole... which included cutting marco out as a character. whoops. oh well. it was for the greater good. maybe he'll be in the epilogue.  
> this is actually my favorite chapter so far. i wrote it all in like. two hours. at midnight. during the summer, of course, so pahahah who needs bedtimes then. yeah. my original plan was cannibalism... buuuut then like. it became... other stuff. yeah. ~*whoo*~  
> hope y'all (y'all... why do i keep on saying y'all i'm not southern...) enjoy the fic so far!


	8. Frost

Annie had been awake for hours. She felt no need for sleep, after a century of listless wandering through dreamland.

Spending the night on a windowsill staring at the stars wasn't a waste of time at all, in her opinion. Watching the stars and seeing those timeless constellations made her feel a little better. As though time had stood still and everything that had happened recently was just a bad dream.

She slowly closed her eyes and took a deep breath of the fresh night air that was softly blowing into the room. It felt so familiar, though it smelled so different. Once upon a time, when she was still a child, she remembered wandering through the evergreen trees that surrounded her castle. The deciduous trees still alive that surrounded Levi's castle smelled so different. It made her a little sad.

A chunk of white charcoal suddenly popped in the fireplace and Annie almost fell out the window in surprise. Not that it would have done much damage; she was on a first-floor guest room near the servants' quarters. After being trapped in a tower for a hundred years, she had rather lost her taste for them and politely declined when Hange offered her room inside one of the many that the castle had.

She eyed the fireplace wearily. It had been burning low all night. Hange said it was to "keep her warm", but Annie had found the room definitely warm enough when she first entered. She remembered Hange had commented on how the room was supposedly _frigid_ when they first entered, but Annie could find nothing wrong with the temperature. If anything, the fire made the room uncomfortably _hot_.

She grunted and looked over at the water pitcher Hange had left her with sitting on a nearby dresser. For the first time in hours, she got up from her seat at the window and reached for the pitcher. She walked over to the smoldering pieces of charcoal still in the hearth and unceremoniously poured water all over them, effectively killing it with a gentle _hiss_.

She smiled with satisfaction, then returned to the window, locking it open so that the heat could escape faster. She stared at the sky and noticed the stars were fading. She wasn't facing the east, so she couldn't see the sun rising, but the view outside seemed to be getting lighter by the minute.

Her stomach rumbled softly and for one crazy moment, she didn't understand why. Then she remembered: she was hungry. Living in a dream for a hundred years really messed with her memories and understanding of how the world worked.

She took one last glance at the setting moon and stepped away from the window and opened her room door, blinking when she was met with a pitch-dark hallway. She binked a few more times to let her eyes adjust to the darkness and when she could see vague outlines, she felt her way along the wall in what she hoped was the direction of the kitchen (she couldn't remember too well at the moment).

Unfortunately, her night vision wasn't as great as she thought it was because she hadn't taken more than four steps when she ran smack dab into Hange.

"Oh! Didn't see you there, Annie. What're you doing up so early? Rather chilly morning, don't ya think? Even for April; I think I can see my breath in here. Do you need help getting up, Annie?"

Hange's questions came rapidly, one after the other, giving Annie barely enough time to process one before the next one was over. "Uh, sure," she slowly replied, only remembering the last question. She took the hand Hange offered her and was pulled up.

"Wow, your hand is cold as ice, are you sure you're okay? What were you doing last night, swimming in the lake? Are you ready for today's tests?"

Annie's head was swimming with all the questions. It seemed to matter not to Hange whether or not she answered them, since she was busy rattling off more questions. _Besides_ , Annie dryly thought, _she'll probably repeat them later during the tests._

She ran into Hange again, who had suddenly stopped walking and became uncharacteristically quiet. "Annie, would you mind if I took your temperature?" she asked in a low voice. No other questions followed.

Annie blinked. "Go ahead…?"

The moment she said it, Hange put a hand to her forehead and Annie instantly recoiled. The scientist's hand _burned_!

Rubbing her forehead, the small blonde glared at the scientist, who looked about as startled as Annie was angry.

"Annie, you're freezing cold!" she exclaimed, rubbing her hand. Her fingers and palm looked yellow and waxy, not to mention a fair deal more bloated than they had just a moment ago. "You've given me second degree frostbite just by touching your forehead. Something is seriously wrong; this can't be healthy, whether it's a side effect of the Curse or not. Being that cold should have killed you by now. Your spinal cord should be totally unresponsive, your heart frozen to the point where it can no longer beat, your flesh so cold and brittle it should be black and broken."

"I feel fine, though," she replied, her normally sleepy-looking eyes widening and becoming alert.

" _Armiiin_ ," Mikasa's voice quietly echoed from a ways away.

Hange sternly looked at the small blonde. "Stay right here, Annie," she instructed before following the sound of Mikasa's voice.

Confused and honestly a little frightened, Annie watched her vanish around a bend.

Annie gently touched a hand to her own forehead. It felt a _little_ cool, but it wasn't anything she found to be concerning.

A strange worm-like feeling of fear ate away at her stomach, twisting and churning it until she felt sick. Annie suddenly wanted to vomit and before she knew what she was doing, she was sprinting down the hall, following Hange.

"Woah, is it just me, or did the air temperature just plummet?" she heard Eren say when she rounded the bend.

"It's not just you, the air temperature's actually dropping," Hange answered.

Annie could hear their footsteps heading away from her, and a part of her wondered why she cared.

"It's Annie," Hange continued.

Why she was so afraid.

"I was planning on starting the tests today."

Why she was running.

"But look at my handㅡ it's frostbitten. Recovering, but still somewhat bitten."

Gradually, Annie began to slow down.

"All I did was touch her forehead, and she froze _the top layer of my flesh_."

The sick, twisting worm in the pit of Annie's stomach slowly went limp and stopped squirming.

"And because of that, I've got her Curse figured out."

Annie stopped listening. She stopped running down the hall. She walked back to her room and locked the door behind her.

* * *

Waking up, for Armin, always began with his awareness slowly creeping up on him. Sometimes it started when he heard the footsteps of one of the maids coming up the stairwell to clean his room, sometimes it was the morning lark singing his song on his windowsill. But sleep often clung to Armin, dragging him back down into its warm embrace.

Even when he had slept out under the stars with Eren and Mikasa, he got up on his own terms. Admittedly, he hadn't gotten much sleep that night, but he still woke up on his own.

So as one would imagine, getting awakened at more or less the crack of dawn by an insane servant, a soldier girl, and her wolf violently shaking him and his bed was quite a jarring experience.

" _Aaugh!_ " he screamed, bolting upright as all the sleepiness in him was rudely bounced off of him. "What happened? Are we leaving?"

"Really weird shit's been happening," Eren hastily said, bouncing up and down on Armin's bed as if he were a young child. "Oh hey look, your fire's still going."

Hange blinked. "Of course it's still going. The hearths are enchanted so that once you start a fire in them, they won't go out unless someone purposely puts them out."

Mikasa gave her a despairing look. "Our fire was long dead this morning," she said. "And there was black grit and sand scattered all around the room."

"And it vanished the moment sunlight touched it and the entire room was a mess," Eren added.

"Huh. Looks like we've got more on our hands right now than just Annie," Hange slowly said. When Armin gave her a funny look, she continued. "The black dust. I read a long while ago in one of Levi's older tomes about a monster called an Alp. It resembles a hat-wearing vampire in many ways and brings nightmares, leaving behind only a strange black dust. From the way you guys described it, I think one of them must have gone a little cuckoo in your room last night."

"But you told us before, this is fairy's territory, and you know magic! I would've thought that you would have had enchantments or spells or something to ward those sorts of things off," Armin pointed out.

Hange looked at the trio with a worried look. "That's the point, we _do_ have spells and all to keep nasty little buggers like them out. They're not terribly strong, hence why Eren and Annie got in so easily despite being Cursed, but they're good enough to keep the weaker monsters and sprites out. So to have an Alp come and destroy your room could mean several things.

"First, it could mean that the enchantments need to be renewed. That's probably the most probable causation, but I'm reluctant to ask Petra to renew them, since the trees still need to recover from last time. And the more dead forest we have surrounding this already creepy old castle, the more likely Alps and Mares and whatnot will move into them, since they're indigenous to those sorts of areas.

"Second, it could mean that it was an abnormally strong Alp that was just able to get through the barriers on its own. Not very likely, in my opinion, since it's only Mares should be strong enough to get through, if at all, but Mares don't leave sand.

"Third, it could mean that Eren and Mikasa, since they're the only ones who experienced this last night, have some tendency to attract these creatures and they wormed their way through the barrier despite it all. I'm not too sure of the likelihood of this answer, since I don't know if either of you get frequent nightmares, but there is one final possibility.

"Fourth, it could mean that the witch herself tracked the two of you down and nonverbally summoned an Alp and let it run loose for a little while before leaving. I'm rather sketchy on this hypothesis. It's by far the most improbable since it would require the witch to know where you two are at all times and actually take the time to torment you like this.

"Those four possibilities are the only ones I can currently think of," Hange finished.

Eren looked nervously from Hange to Mikasa and back again. "This wasn't… this wasn't the first time I've had nightmares," he admitted, looking rather uncomfortable as he did so. "But it was different than the ones I've been having for a while."

Hange raised an eyebrow. "You've had recurring nightmares for a while, you say? How long?"

"Guys, please, what about Annie?" Armin cut in, his voice sounding surprisingly desperate.

Hange furrowed her brow. "Well, as it turns out, I didn't have to do any testing or research on her Curse, it just showed itself."

Armin breathed a sigh of relief. "So she doesn't have to stay behind when we visit that village? That's great!" he began.

"Armin, no," Hange cut him off and he gave her a somewhat frightened look. She sighed, not too sure how to break the news to him. "Have you ever heard the story of the Snow Queen?"

A cold, heavy feeling settled in his gut as he remembered being told that story when he was young by Lynne. He knew where this was going, but he nodded his head nonetheless.

Hange's expression softened. "Yeah. I'm sorry Armin, but at the rate she's freezing, I don't think you're going to want her to go on this adventure with you guys. I'll work on a solution while you guys are gone, but I'm afraid she can't come along. I doubt she'd want to come, either."

Somewhat desperate, he looked over at the dresser Hange had provided, where he spotted the now somewhat wilted rose he picked last night.

"I'll stay behind," he blurted out. "Eren and Mikasa can go out to the village, and I'll stay behind with you, Hange. Please, I have an idea," he pleaded.

Hange sighed and looked at Eren and Mikasa.

They exchanged glances and Mikasa said, "We're fine with that."

Hange smiled and clapped her hands together. "It's settled then. You'll change into your daywear, I'll pack your basket, and you'll head out as Armin follows me. Now hop to it, mutton chops~"

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i'm starting to remember how i thought about these chapters as i wrote them a little more. i was a little reluctant to describe annie the way i did, but then i realized that's part of the point of writing this fic. not sugarcoating any of the gore and eye horror of the original tales. and that helped.  
> thanks for all you guys' comments and kudos!


	9. Soup

Leaving the castle with only Eren by her side felt very strange to Mikasa even though she had only had other travelling companions for two days. But it also felt very nice to have some guaranteed time alone with him for a few days. He was the best companion she could ask for. Armin became conscious of the silence too quickly and tried to fill it with his rambles and she found Annie somewhat creepy. She was unsettling and in their brief time of travelling together, Mikasa could never find it in herself to put her guard down around the girl.

The village they were heading to was quite a rural one, many miles from the nearest town or city, though just a few miles away from Levi's castle. Technically speaking, Levi was lord of their lands, though the legends of him being a beast persisted long after Petra had come and broken the spell, so no one ever bothered him, according to Hange.

Yet even with the lack of visitors, there still seemed to be a vague path in the direction of the village. Mikasa had been somewhat suspicious of it when Hange pointed it out to her, but it seemed the quickest route.

"Hey Mikasa?" Eren asked as they walked. All around them were dead trees and decaying leaf litter, and despite it being early morning, it felt as though they were walking during the evening.

"Yeah, Eren?" Mikasa quietly responded. She was feeling strangely on edge, her hand constantly straying to the basket on her arm, ready to whip out the knife at a moment's notice. Her eyes were constantly surveying the area, her brain subconsciously recording every tiny movement she saw and every sound she heard.

Eren's ear twitched in what appeared to be irritation and he suddenly stopped in his tracks. "Do you hear that? Sounds like hoof steps."

Mikasa stopped as well and began to actively listen.

 _Clip, clop, clip, clop_. Hoofsteps. They were soft, but she could definitely hear them.

She reached into the basket and dug out the knife, adjusting her grip on the hilt and ready to fight at any second. Eren stayed close to her feet.

A centaur shyly ambled into the path in front of them. He was tall, even for a centaur, with a palomino coat and a shock of dirty blond hair that grew not only on his head, but all the way down his spine. He looked at the duo and looked genuinely surprised when he noticed their hostile looks. His face flushed red and he took a few steps backward, almost rear-ending a tree just off the path.

"I-I'm sorry, Miss. I saw you walking down the path a-and I-I-I… I just wanted to say you have very b-beautiful black hair," he stammered.

"Thank you," Mikasa calmly replied, not letting go of her knife.

The centaur became even more flustered and panicked. "I'm really sorry about this," he awkwardly said. "I-owe-you-one-mynameisJean _callmeifyouneedme_!" His voice crescendoed and sped up as he turned heel and galloped away.

Eren bared his teeth slightly. "Something seemed off about that centaur," he noted, "and not in the sense that he's Cursed. He smelled funny."

Mikasa, however, seemed indifferent and absently put the knife back in her basket and started walking again. "He seemed like just a regular centaur to me, Eren. I'm sure there's nothing odd about him."

Eren sprinted ahead and blocked her path. "Mikasa, _no_. Centaurs don't just wander over to people and compliment their hair! They stay in their colony grounds in the woods, staring at the stars! They're noc-tur-nal. It's the middle of the morning; don't you find that entire instance rather weird?"

Mikasa pursed her lips as she thought about it. "Yeah, that is kind of weird," she finally agreed, but then looked down at him sternly. "But what are we going to do about it? We have a goal in mind that we should probably accomplish before prancing off on a side quest. It's not just the two of us anymore, and because of that we have a better chance of getting you back to normal. Please Eren, just leave it for now."

Eren sulked for a few moments, but fell in step beside her. "How do you think we'll be able to identify the Cursed from the others when we get to the village?" he asked after a spell.

"I don't know," Mikasa replied and they fell silent again.

A couple hours passed and they walked in comfortable silence together on their path through the woods. The dead trees and leaf litter had long made way for gradually healthier and more alive trees.

In the distance, there were sounds of laughter and a fair. Slowly, the sounds drew nearer and nearer until the trees grew sparser and sparser and the two found themselves at the edge of what appeared to be a carnival, and quite a lively one at that. Children swarmed in and out of tents, even at the fringe, and there seemed to be well worn paths of trampled grass that appeared to lead to food stalls that sold only… _soup_?

" _This is really weird_ ," Eren loudly whispered to Mikasa from the corner of his mouth. " _Why are the vendors only selling soup?_ "

" _I have no idea_ ," Mikasa whispered back. She drew her hood over her hair, and crouched down. "C'mere, you," she said to Eren, holding her arms out as though expecting a hug. "And pipe down. You'll already look suspicious enough even in my arms, we don't need another talking dog type headline branding us as weirdos."

"Yeah, yeah, sure," Eren replied as he climbed into her arms. They'd done this numerous times in the past when they needed to pass off as just a simple girl and her dog. Mikasa's black hair and china pale skin was a rarity in the areas that they wandered, often attracting a lot of unwanted attention, so she pulled the hood of her cloak up to hide her hair and carried Eren so that her arms were hard to see in his thick fur. That, and it was harder to identify him as a wolf when she carried him.

With her fiancé snuggled safely in her arms, Mikasa plunged headfirst into the carnival. She ignored the brightly colored tents advertizing games and fun houses and instead tried to head towards the center, where she assumed the town was located.

Many vendors loudly advertised their waresㅡ namely soups of various kindsㅡ when Mikasa passed by, often picking her out from the crowd specifically. Luckily, she managed to ignore them without any reaction, and it made sense considering how loud, lively, and bustling the fair was.

The heart of the festival, when she finally found it, was not, in fact the center of the town, but instead an inn. And what a busy inn it was! It seemed that everyone wanted to visit this particular building all at once.

Mikasa looked down at Eren, who blinked slowly at her. "You think this is the place?" she asked him in a hushed voice. He glanced over at the building: it looked fairly normal to him, and it didn't give off any odd or particularly magical vibes that he could sense.

But then again, they were used to having places of magic avoided and the feeling of it piling up. Perhaps the people flocking to the inn were taking bits of magic with them when they left. They had no way of knowing.

Eren looked back at Mikasa and subtly nodded. She acknowledged him and wove her way through the crowd and into the inn.

The inside had a rather homey feel, though it was rather ruined by the jostling and bumping of all the people entering and exiting. Mikasa was starting to feel rather annoyed at all of them for pushing her around and stepping on her toes and whatnot, but there was honestly nothing she could do about it.

She pushed her way to the front, which, oddly enough was a bar. After pushing a rather touchy-feely and emotional drunk away from her, she took a seat on a miraculously open barstool.

The man behind the counter was large and rather strong-looking, his shaggy brown hair and scruffy beard streaked with grey. His eyes were crinkled around the edges with crow's feet, his face smiling merrily, but his eyes were spiritless and melancholy, as though all the life had been taken out of them.

He put on a smile and leaned against the counter in front of Mikasa as he wiped down a bowl. "Yeh here fer the soup?" he asked.

Mikasa shook her head. "No, thank you. Though I would like to know why the whole town is having a soup festival."

The man's eyes became filled with nostalgia and he put the bowl down. "Ah, well, it started a num'er of years ago when an animated teapot hopped inter town askin' for a _soupçon of soup_." He laughed, then continued. "M' daughter had been tendin' the inn that day, yeh see, an' the teapot's request just happ'ned to tickle her fancy, so after the teapot left on what m' daughter had claimed to be 'a grand quest to find true love,' she tried to convince me to start an event dedicated to soup er somethin'."

The innkeeper's eyes went from being filled with a daydreamy nostalgia to an indescribable melancholic sadness and spoke no more.

Eren was fidgeting on Mikasa's lap, begging and whining to be let down, but Mikasa didn't let him go. "Did something happen to her?" she gently asked the man.

He waved his hand lazily in the air but didn't reply and moved onto another, assumedly paying customer.

Mikasa sighed. She had a strange hunch that the innkeeper's daughter was connected with the nearby Cursed, even before she learned about the girl's encounter with Hange, and while the innkeeper's response gave her reason to believe that something had happened to the girl, she had nothing to support her hunch that she'd been Cursed.

Eren squirmed again, whining louder to remind Mikasa of his presence.

"What is it, Eren?" she quietly asked, leaning in so she could talk directly into his ear.

"Did you see where his hand was waving to?" he whispered in reply, so softly she almost didn't catch it in the rowdy inn. Mikasa shook her head, so he flicked his own head in the direction of a notice board.

Mikasa wordlessly slipped off the barstool and wove her way through the traffic to the empty corner with the notice board. There were several flyers on it of various stages of age and decay, and while most of them were job applications or requests, one of them in particular caught her eye.

It had a rather hasty looking sketch of a smiling, ponytailed girl with a childishly soft, round face on it. The girl appeared to be laughing, though since the flyer looked several years old, it only make Mikasa's heart ache with sadness. She read the caption.

_Missing: Sasha Braus, age 12._

_Brown hair and eyes, soft build, somewhat pudgy._

_161 centimeters tall, 61 kilograms._

_Missing since April 17th, 1420_

_Missing from Dauper, Kingdom Rose._

_If found, please return to Kartoffel Inn._

"Missing for four years now," Eren breathed, then looked up at Mikasa. "That's an awful long time. No wonder the innkeeper looked so sad when we asked."

Mikasa nodded. "I'm going to have to put you down now; I'm taking this flyer."

Eren's eyes widened and he looked up to her as she delicately removed the tack pinning the flyer to the board and gingerly folded the fragile flyer before putting it in her basket. "You really think she went missing from a Curse?" he asked.

Mikasa stretched her arms. "It's all we have to go off of for now, so we can't eliminate the possibility of it," she replied and began to leave the inn.

Eren scampered after her. "But how are we going to _find_ her?"

"Do you remember how the innkeeper smelled?"

"It's kind of hard to forget a smell you smelled five minutes ago, Mika."

"Then we'll try to use that to track her. Somehow."

"But it's been four _years_ since she went missing. I doubt she smells like this place anymore, if you want me to be honest."

"I told you Eren, I don't know quite how we'll pull this one off. But do you remember the general direction in which the spots were on the map in comparison to the village?"

Eren nodded. "To an extent, yes. But weren't there two blips on the map, not just one? What if we have it all wrong and it's not Sasha?"

Mikasa chewed her lip as they wove through the currently empty streets of the non-festival side of town. "I'm not sure, Eren, but there's no other towns around for miles and miles. I'm guessing that the inn's notice board is the only one in the town, since it's so small, and Sasha is the only person missing, and she's been gone for years. It's our only lead right now, so we'll have to follow it."

Eren audibly gulped.

Mikasa paused and looked at her fiancé, her gaze softening. "Eren, if you don't want to come, you can go back to Levi's castle. I'm sure they wouldn't mind a bit of help with Annie."

But he didn't. Instead, Eren's expression hardened and he growled. "Mikasa, I will follow you into the depths of hell if you asked me to. Just don't go where I can't follow," he replied and marched onward.

Mikasa nodded, and adjusting her hood, followed him.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i had literally been wanting to say the phrase, "a soupçon of soup" since chapter two i'm not going to lie. also, i need to stop forgetting that i need to update this every couple days. anyway, i hope you had a good time reading! feel free to leave your thoughts in the comments (i'd say every time someone comments, a kitten is given the power of the speech, but i'm not here to tell lies), and as always, have a greaaat daaaay~


	10. Matchbox

Armin bit his lip nervously as he stood in front of the door that led to Annie's bedroom. He could feel the coldness lazily escaping the room and engulfing him, slowly invading the rest of the hallway, into the castle.

Bracing himself for the gust of freezing air sure to come, he put his hand on the doorknob and turned. It didn't move too far, and the door refused to budge.

Armin grit his teeth. _It's locked. I should have known_ , he bitterly thought, then slammed his shoulder against the door, hoping that it was simply frozen shut. When it didn't move, he let out a sigh and slid down so that he sat on the floor.

He halfheartedly knocked on the door from there. "Annie?" he called, not expecting a reply, "Are you there, Annie? It's Armin."

He was met with, as he expected, with silence.

The blond boy sighed, then taking a few wires Hange had given him out of his pocket, and said, "I'm coming in, Annie."

Armin got up from his seat in front of the door and stuck a few lockpicking wires into the keyhole on the doorknob. Not too sure what else to do with them, he began to wriggle them around, this way and that, while attempting to turn it in the hope that he'd somehow opened it.

It took a lot of playing, but after a few minutes, Armin got the lock to turn and heard a soft click. "Bingo," he whispered as he withdrew his wires, then looked at them. He suddenly made a face and wondered aloud, "Why didn't I just ask Hange for the key?" He broke into laughter for a moment and pocketed the tools, opening the door to Annie's room.

He was greeted by a blast of cold air in the face, and he had to shield his eyes with his hand. Winter winds continued to blow around him, whipping his hair into his face and numbing his nose and cheeks, even after he closed the do, or behind him.

Annie herself was sitting near the window, staring out of it as the edges became covered in thick, thick frost.

"Annie?" Armin asked, a note of wonder clear in his voice when he saw her.

The girl slowly turned to face him, and a chill unrelated to the temperature ran down Armin's spine.

Her face was bloated, pale, and waxy, her hair lay dried, dead, and limp on her head, looking reminiscent of spiderwebs, her lips were an awful shade of purplish blue, and her eyes, swollen and dead, had webs of frost creeping onto them. Her cheeks were sunken and hollow, her fingers were turning blue, and Annie in her entirety simply reeked of frozen death.

" _Armin_ ," she said, very slowly and deliberately, her face slowly lighting up into a smile, revealing a blackening tongue and gums. She got up from her seat and began to approach him.

Armin felt the hair on the back of his neck stand up, but he allowed the girl to come near him.

" _Armin_ ," she practically sang, wrapping her frigid arms around his neck and gazing what her assumed to be fondly up at him.

"Y-yeah," Armin stammered, his teeth chattering and lips numb. He put his hands on Annie's shoulders and tried to gently push her away from him. "L-listen, An-n-n-nie," he began, but the girl simply closed her eyes, and pulling him down, crushed her lips against his.

Armin's eyes widened, his lips suddenly stinging with the cold, dry, pressure that came with Annie's kiss. It felt nothing like when he had kissed her when she was asleep; that had been shy and tender, soft even. This was far more harsh and cold, making his lips tingle and numb.

The kiss was over soon after it registered in his head, but the numbness in his lips didn't go away. In fact, it began to spread all throughout his body until he stopped shivering.

 _A kiss to stop the cold_ , he remembered, and his blood would have run cold if he were still capable. He noticed Annie leaning in for another kiss and his memory jolted again: _and a second kiss to forget, the third kiss spelling death_.

Armin jerked away. Annie stared at him, her expression half confused, half crestfallen.

Armin's thoughts were reeling, and his eyes flicked wildly around the room, trying to find something that might help him free Annie.

Everything in the room was completely covered in a thick layer of white frost, from the ceiling right down to the wooden floor. A few things in the room were completely unrecognizable because of it, but there was one thing that Armin saw that was still, strangely enough, completely intact: the fireplace.

Brushing a few frozen strands of hair out of his face, Armin slowly made his way to the hearth. His frozen hands fumbling, he grabbed a pack of matches off the top of the fireplace and clumsily took out a match.

Annie, who had been watching him curiously, visibly darkened when she saw what he was doing. Racing towards him as fast as her frostbitten legs would carry her (which wasn't very fast), she tried to pry the matchbox from his hands, but it was too late for her: Armin managed to strike a match.

He had been planning on restarting the fire in the hearth, despite the somewhat still damp logs, but the moment he saw the tiny flame of the match, _he found himself captured in a dream._

_His feet were bare and his clothes simple. The air smelled fresh and salty, and there was a cool breeze caressing his face. He felt something soft but simultaneously coarse between his toes, and the warm sunshine enveloping him._

_A beautifully clear blue sky came into view above him and an equally blue expanse of ocean lay in front of him, the white foam misting just so that it barely hit his face. He heard the sharp cry of a gull above the dull crash and roar of the waves. Armin felt relaxed, at ease._

_To his left, he saw Annie, looking perfectly healthy and happy and he was about to greet her when the sun was snuffed out and for a few seconds, he was engulfed by darkness and falling, falling,_ _**falling** _ _._

His eyes snapped open, and he found himself staring at a gently smoking match. Annie was next to him, looking as dead and frightening as ever.

Except for her eyes. Her eyes were no longer frosted and dead, instead they were sparked with a new life.

Armin thought of the brief vision he just (assumedly) shared with Annie. He'd never seen the ocean before, since his kingdom was landlocked, but he had read about it in books and had always longed to visit it. Armin was suddenly filled with an overwhelming longing to light another match, just to be able to see the ocean once more. He could feel Annie's icy fingers prying at his own in a feeble attempt to get the matchbox from him.

Gently, he pulled his hands away from hers and removed another match. It was a little easier this time than the last; he didn't feel quite as cold as he had, though considering the circumstances, that could be a good or bad thing.

He struck the match against the side of the box and Annie's room slowly faded, and _the area around him became warmer and warmer, the air became dry and arid, and soon he found himself roasting in his own skin._

_The ground beneath him was red, hard-packed dirt full of rocks and covered with small, half-wilted shrubbery. The sky above him was blue, far too blue to be considered normal in Armin's opinion._

_He was sweating buckets already, despite only being in this new location for less than a minute. His clothes clung to him, his comparatively long blond hair was plastered to his forehead and neck, and it all made him smell atrocious._

_A heated gust of wind blew dust into his face and eyes, causing him to tear up and sneeze repeatedly. Hacking and coughing, he turned away from the wind, and blinking and crying the dirt out of his eyes, found himself face-to-face with Annie again._

_Her eyes were bright and alive, greedily drinking in their surroundings, but again, before he could say or do anything, the ground dropped from beneath them, and he fell into darkness. Falling, falling,_ _ **falling**_ …

Until he opened his eyes to yet another burnt-out matchstick.

The fragrant smell of wood smoke was lingering faintly in the room. Was it just him, or was the frost a little clearer?

Armin shook his head to clear his mind and looked at Annie. The color was returning to her cheeks, and while her skin still seemed waxy and fragile, it seemed her blood was beginning to circulate again.

Armin himself shivered; the bite the cold had returned to him, and for that he was glad. It was breaking what Annie had cast on him as well as her Curse.

He lit a third match. As he stared intently at the flame, the room and _everything began to fade away once more._

_He was in a forest, and it was night. Countless, innumerable silver stars filled the sky, which was a gorgeous mix of shades of dark blue, inky black, and deep purple. Poffs of dark grey-black clouds obstructed some of the sky, though there was a beautiful, pale, misty white streak that crossed the entire dome of the night._

_Crickets chirped, the trees ached and groaned with the wind, and numerous small animals rustled in the underbrush. Leaves crackled beneath Armin's feet as they swirled around him on the breeze, getting trapped and crushed as he unwittingly walked on them._

_Armin didn't notice. He was too focused on the setting. It all seemed so natural, clean, free of magic. The forest was perfect, a breath of fresh air compared to all the heaviness in the air he'd been feeling lately in the fairy realm._

" _Annie," he found himself calling into the darkness, though he couldn't hear himself. "Aaanniiie! Are you here?"_

_He scanned his surroundings, but there wasn't a single sign of the small, blonde girl in sight. Armin bit his lip, slowly turning full circle._

_A feeling of weightlessness began to form in his gut, and panicking, not wanting to leave this fantasy before tracking down Annie, pulled the matchbox out of his pocket and lit another match._

_He began to run through the forest, unsure of his direction, but running nonetheless. It was difficult, since there was hardly any light, for the moon was not out._

"Annie!" _he cried still unable to hear himself, shielding his lone lit match. He was stumbling through the dark, striking match after match that refused to even light his path._

"Annie!" _he felt himself scream, time and time again, his throat becoming raw and voice growing hoarse._

" _Annie," he croaked, his legs stumbling onward through sheer willpower alone. His few remaining matches are burning dangerously low, and he had only two left unlit. Just before one sputtered out, he lit a single fresh match._

_Then, he heard it. The light, airy laughter of the sprites, their high-pitched, twittering voices talking above his head. Armin slowed down._

_They were all around him, the sprites. Little baby blue lantern lights floating in the sky, whizzing through the air: that was them, those were the sprites._

_He felt a slight tug on his bangs, pulling him forward. He felt their tiny hands on his back, pushing him forward, their tiny little hands tugging at his fingers and shirt; anything they could grasp, the sprites took hold of and guided him forward._

_His match began to burn out, but a single, tiny, blue sprite blew at it and gave it life again. It giggled, then sped ahead._

_Softly, gently, Armin was pulled through the forest. In the distance, he could hear the bubbling and running of a creek. The area in front of him was gradually becoming lighter and lighter._

_Before he knew it, he had walked into a clearing near the edge of a cliff next to a waterfall. A girl with pale blonde hair in an elegant braid was facing away from him, her legs dangling off the edge. Sprites wove in and out of the forest, bringing colorful wildflowers and weaving them into the braid._

" _Annie?" Armin hoarsely whispered, unable to believe his eyes. For the first time in what had felt like an eternity, he could hear his voice again._

_The girl turned around, her eyes looking soft, gentle, and kind, not bored or baleful like he was used to, but despite the change in mood, it was clearly Annie._

_Armin felt as though a weight had been lifted from his chest, and as Annie was picking herself up off the cliff, he tackled her in a hug, throwing them both off the edge as they began to fall, fall,_ _**fall** _ _._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ooh yes. this is a good chapter, with the dreams and lighter tone and all.   
> did you guys know that usually i write the chapters the night before they're due? i mean, these are a little old, since they're all pre-written, but these were written the night before they were due, too.  
> sometimes i forget that you guys aren't caught up with the story and i forget to update it for like four days and then i'm like oh no i have to update enchanted. yeah. i'm so responsible, guys.  
> hope you enjoyed!


	11. Dryad's Trail

Eren plodded alongside Mikasa as they walked through the woods. Since entering on their search for Sasha, absolutely nothing suspicious or even remotely strange had happened to them, and it had been like that for what to Eren had felt like hours.

He was about to mention the suspiciousness of nothing suspicious happening to them when he heard a loud rustling of leaves in the higher branches of the trees. His ears perked up, and he was about to warn Mikasa when she suddenly snapped to attention and yelled:

"Eren, jump!"

Without thinking or hesitating, Eren jumped, and an arrow whizzed between his legs and sunk head first into the soft, mossy soil. He cursed loudly and looked up at the trees above him. While his eyes couldn't see anything wrong with them, his sharp ears managed to catch a softly uttered expletive.

"Mikasa, they're in the trees!" he cried, stumbling backwards only to have another arrow graze his flank. He yelped in pain and twisted around to see only leaves, fluttering to the ground.

Mikasa had her dagger drawn, her posture low and defensive. Eren crept backwards even further so that they covered each other's blind spots.

Then suddenly, everything was laughing at them. Eren grit his teeth and pawed at the dirt slightly, but did not move, his shifting eyes searching for the source.

The laughter slowly died down around them, until it came from just one direction, one clear voice. A high up branch dipped and swayed, its leaves rustling loudly and a girl jumped down.

She appeared to be a dryad of some sort, with rough patches of bark covering large parts of her arms and legs and a nubby set of floral antlers peeking out of her chestnut brown hair, but she did not have traditional dryad wear, instead sporting a plain leather tunic. She held a simple wooden bow in her hands, and there were a few arrows in a quiver slung across the girl's back.

The dryad looked sternly at the duo, adjusting her grip on her bow as her free hand drifted towards her quiver. "What are you doing in these woods, mortals?" she demanded, every word spoken very distinctly and enunciated perfectly.

"Are you Sasha Braus?" Mikasa asked in exchange.

At first, Eren wasn't too sure where that leap in logic had come from; this dryad was far taller and looked far more muscular than the girl in the flyer, not to mention her face seemed to have a permanent scowl etched on it. The nubby antlers were also a problem, since dryads age very, very slowly and four years wouldn't have been long enough to develop that large of antlers.

But at the same time, she might not have been wrong about it, either. While the drawing definitely depicted a much softer, less rugged little girl, the puberty brick never left a person _completely_ unrecognizable from their former selves.

The dryad's expression completely changed from a bridled one to one of shock, then morphed into one that looked angrier than ever. She pulled an arrow from her quiver and nocked it, pointing her drawn bow threateningly at Mikasa. Eren growled and stepped forward, ready to defend her.

"How would _you_ know and why do you care about who I _used_ to be," the dryad loudly spat.

"Your father's looking for you," Mikasa calmly replied.

The girl, at this point Eren assumed it was safe to call her Sasha, scowled even more. " _LIAR_ ," she roared, but her hands were trembling now.

Mikasa fished around in her basket and pulled out the ancient flyer from the inn. She unfolded it in front of Sasha. "Yes, he _is_. He's been looking for you for years, ever since you left, really. He misses you and _wants you back_ , Sasha," she insisted.

Sasha bit her lip as she slowly lowered her bow. Her scowl was gone, and her eyes were watering profusely, threatening to streak her face with a waterfall of tears. She slowly put her arrow back in her quiver and slung her bow over her back, taking a disbelieving step towards the pair, her hands reaching for the fragile scrap of paper.

Eren relaxed and sat down as one fat tear after another rolled down Sasha's cheeks, softly pattering on the paper, causing the ink to smear and blur. Her face became red and splotchy and the girl began to sob.

Eventually, Sasha's tears slowed, allowing her to dry her cheeks. "Thank you… for telling me," she choked out as she pocketed the now damp flyer. "But I cannot return to the inn."

"Why not?" Mikasa asked.

"Did the witch turn you into a dryad?" Eren queried at the same time.

Sasha blinked slowly at Eren, then shifted her gaze to Mikasa. She motioned to the tree she has jumped down from. "I have… _responsibilities_ … outside of human society now. And as for… Eren, was it? As for Eren's question, I don't recall ever being cursed by any old hags, but…" she trailed off and looked deeper into the forest and ground her teeth a little.

"There usually isn't any traffic in these woods, but for the last few weeks, there's been a strange man heading in that direction. He's tall and blond, and normally I wouldn't pay him any heed, but I could sense some very powerful and deep-rooted magic anchored to his being."

Eren's ears perked up and he sat up a little straighter. "But what about you being a dryad?" he pressed. "Did you really go twelve years living among people without realizing or knowing you're a dryad."

Sasha tapped her chin thoughtfully. "Well, you see, I didn't _know_ I was a dryad until I was twelve, and even then, I'm only a quarter on my mom's side.

"You see, the way human and magical humanoid hybrids work is that at the cusp of puberty or so, it's traditional that the offspring's magical kin visit them and give them the choice of living as a human for the rest of their lives, or as a magical creature. Should they live as a human, then they're enchanted so that they can pass as one for the rest of their lives, and if they choose to live as a creature, then they forsake the world of man and enter the fairy realm for good.

"Right now, I'm living as a dryad. But I'll never be able to live as the full-blooded or even halfling dryads do. I have difficulty merging with my tree. It's weak and sickly always. I don't wear traditional dryad wear because my body simply cannot produce it.

"But I enjoy this life. It's quiet. The others don't bother me; they're asleep in their trees. I find it peaceful. And thus, I cannot return to the world of men, for I have given my life to the fairies. But give my regards to my father," Sasha quietly said and reached up into her hair and pulled at her tiny antlers, which came off with a nearly noiseless snap.

"It's close to shedding time anyway. The flowers shouldn't die until I do, so be sure to tell him that," she explained as she dropped them into Mikasa's hands.

Sasha sniffled a little and began to return to her tree. "Thanks for–"

"Wait!" Eren cried, springing to his feet. "You said there had been a tall, blond man coming through the forest lately, right? Could you perhaps take us down his route? We're not as in-tune with the magic balance of the area; we'd have no idea where to go."

Sasha slowly blinked at him. "Why?" was all she asked.

"We've been hunting for a witch for years. She's cast a curse on the both of us, and we have to kill her in order to return to normal. We know there are two Cursed in this forest; a magic map told us," Mikasa answered, her voice borderline _pleading_.

"But there have been no women walking through the forest, just the blond man," Sasha pointed out.

"Maybe she shapeshifts, because _I_ remember it was an old lady who did this to me," Eren insisted. "Please, Sasha, it's for the greater good. Remember what it was like to be human? Your human friends and relationships? Please. Help us."

Sasha ground her teeth in thought. "Very well," she replied, stepping down from her tree onto the ground for the first time in what Eren assumed must have been ages. "I will be your forest guide. I will help you find this witch or warlock's hiding place. No strings attached; it's for the greater good."

Eren felt himself heave a sigh of relief and Mikasa notably relaxed.

"Thank you."

* * *

Sasha tread lightly on the soft green grass of the forest. Not because she cared deeply for the little nanofairies that lived in and around it, but rather because something deep within her gut told her that, the further she went into this area of the forest, the darker and more unnatural the magic felt.

Her temporary companions seemed to sense it as well. On occasion, Sasha looked back to make sure they were okay and she noted that Mikasa had, instead of keeping close her basket and in turn whatever meager protection she might have hidden in there, pulled out a dagger of sorts and kept it on her belt. Both Eren and Mikasa tread so quietly, sometimes Sasha feared that they had simply vanished. Disappeared, and never to be found again.

The forest grew shadier and, strangely enough, bluer as they continued on. Sasha's instincts began to nag at her to return to her tree before it was too late. She ignored them, insisting that she would be okay.

There came a light in front of them. It felt promising and hopeful, yet every fiber of Sasha's being screamed at her to turn back now, that this place spelled danger.

Inexplicably and as though in a dream, Sasha looked back on her followers, then began to run towards the light.

She didn't know if her companions were following her, but she began to run faster and faster, feeling strangely freed. Her feet began to dance on nothing but air, her legs churning as though they were mechanical, nothing seeming to matter but the space in front of her, growing lighter and lighter until she burst into a clearing and stopped.

Her instincts fell silent and she began to listen, and quietly, a breeze carried her a song.

" _Baw me bairne, sleep softly now._

" _I saw a sweet and seemly sight,_

" _A blissful bird, a blossom bright,_

" _That morning made and mirth among._ "

It was sad and poorly sung, the voice too low and full of cracks to be able to sound even remotely beautiful. But it was full of sadness and desperation, of longing and grief.

" _Lullay lullow, lullay lully,_

" _Beway bewy, lullay lullow,_

" _Lullay lully,_

" _Baw me bairne, sleep softly now._ "

The somber melody filled Sasha with sympathy for the poor soul that was singing it. She heard her companions crash through the woods behind her, but before either of them could say them, she softly shushed them.

" _A maiden mother, meek and mild,_

" _In cradle keep, a knavë child,_

" _That softly sleep; she sat and sang._

" _Baw me bairne, sleep softly now._ "

The singer fell silent. All Sasha could hear now was the singer softly weeping.

She hushed her companions again and began to follow the noise, motioning for them to follow her.

The sun felt lovely and warm on her skin, especially after all that darkness and shadow, and began to fill her with an energy she hadn't felt in ages.

They followed the weeping as it grew louder and louder, but as they approached it, the air around them began to mist and cloud.

"Sasha… are you sure this is where the sorcerer came? The air doesn't feel as… heavy anymore," Mikasa nervously said as they plunged deeper into the mist.

"No," Sasha truthfully replied. "I don't feel the heaviness of dark magic in the air anymore, either. But there's someone crying, and since there's no one around for miles, that's your best bet of finding anyone useful."

The couple– were they a couple? It seemed so to Sasha from the way they trusted each other– seemed to silently agree.

At one point, the fog grew so dense, Sasha was sure she could drive nails into it. The sobbing had died down a little, but there seemed a dim outline of a cottage close by.

They walked to the cottage, right up to the white picket fence.

Jumping over it, Sasha knew _immediately_ that something was wrong. She had no shoes on and the ground beneath her felt slick and wet, but not in a clean way, like the fresh morning dew. It felt thicker, more viscous, and definitely _very_ wrong.

Biting her tongue and hoping that her comrades were following– the mist was getting too thick; Sasha could barely see her own toes– she took a step forward. _Splosh_.

Her foot landed in a thick, cold puddle.

Horror began to make a nest in Sasha's stomach as curiosity started to take her over. She slowly crouched down and dipped two fingers into the puddle and brought the liquid up to her lips, as unsanitary as it was, and tasted it.

Sharp, metallic, and unmistakable.

 _Blood_.

She could hear soft sniffles very close nearby. "Hey," she called, not too sure what else to say.

"Who's there?" a boy's voice croaked in reply.

Sasha duck walked in the direction of the voice and saw a figure hunched over a limp body. "I'm a dryad," she answered, hoping her voice sounded kind enough. "My name's Sasha. What's yours?"

She could see him now. His golden eyes were puffy and bloodshot, blood covered him from the chest down, and he held a somewhat disemboweled, limp girl that resembled him in his arms.

He stared at her, not saying anything for a while.

"Connie. Connie Springer."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i just finished this arc the other day, actually. it ended up taking a little while longer than i anticipated, which led to a chapter that at first was filler but then i changed up the plot a little and wham that chapter became important and yeah. these author's notes should start becoming relevant to the story itself in abouuuuttt.... two weeks. yup.   
> anyway, hope you enjoyed! leave a comment or kudos, if that's what you're into, and as always, have a greaaat daaay~~


	12. Wardrobe

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> I'm still a little unsure about my thought process when naming this chapter but ¯\\_(ツ)_/¯.

_Falling, falling, falling. Annie was falling down a tall, tall cliff with a waterfall._

_Falling, falling, falling. The pale, silver light of the moon lit the water in front of her beautifully, making it sparkle._

_Their fantasy extinguished itself soon after, the match keeping it alive put out by the mist. Annie slowly closed her eyes and allowed the darkness to engulf her._

* * *

The first thing Annie noticed when she came to was Armin. He was holding her in his arms as they both lay on the frosty stone floor, and she could hear his gentle breathing coming from behind her.

Annie had never been one who enjoyed being touched, even before her time asleep in her tower, though that experience increased her dislike tenfold. Internally recoiling, she gently took his arms off of her and sat up.

She shivered from the cold, her dress completely soaked in melted ice water, and glanced out the window.

The sky was a lovely shade of pinkish lilac; it was dusk.

Annie glanced back down at Armin, who still lay fast asleep on the ground, a peaceful smile on his face. She hoped he wouldn't catch pneumonia while he slept.

Annie's dress dragged along the floor when she walked, leaving streaks and pools of water in her wake. She slowly walked towards to the wardrobe, weighed down by what seemed like _liters_ of water.

She opened the elegantly carved doors…

… Only to find that the wardrobe was empty.

Annie swore softly, then gathered her skirts and wrung as much of it out the best she could as she clumsily walked out her bedroom door.

She silently wandered the castle halls, vaguely looking for Hange, but at the same time not. The cold began to sink into her, and she began to shiver profusely.

"Real chilly last night, wasn't it?" a deep and somewhat dry voice asked from behind her.

Annie jumped, startled, and whipped her head around to see who had just spoken.

It was Levi, master of the castle. She has gotten to know him a little the previous night; the fact that he was generally nocturnal and preferred to spend his time keeping things clean, neat, and organized; that he was more or less a solitary creature and when he invited or came to you for company it was a huge sign of his favor; and that he had absolutely no intentions of passing on his family name or lands and when he died, should Hange not be alive, it would simply go unclaimed.

"Levi," Annie stated, somewhat startled.

"Levi indeed," the master agreed, his tone somewhat apathetic. "Are you looking for something, or are you just planning on destroying my floors with water damage as you admire the portraits?"

His comment on her wet dress made Annie feel self-conscious of her clothing and folded her arms across her chest. "I'm looking for Hange," she bluntly replied. "As I'm _sure_ you have noticed, I need a change of clothes, but my wardrobe was empty."

Levi's expression didn't change, but he did nod understandingly. "Petra's still here, so Hange should be in her room. It's down the hall in the East Wing, seventh door to your right. And a word of advice for now, though: stay out of the ballroom. I think those girls are planning a social event of some sort, and believe _me_ , there hasn't been a ball or whatnot here in over a decade. Even if there are people here who still believe I'm Cursed, you can bet your entire wallet that there will be a bunch of oddballs _flocking_ here just to make sure."

Annie solemnly nodded at Levi. "I'll keep that in mind," she promised, then gathered her skirts and began to run down the hall in the direction Levi had pointed her to.

Soon, she began to hear their muffled voices drifting down the hall, and she slowed down.

"Are you sure this is going to work, Hange? I mean, balls are held all the time all over the continent. What makes you think that this particular ball would attract the witch?"

"Well, first of all, it's being held at a reclusive former Cursed's castle. That alone should set off at least _one_ flag. Then, of course, there was Eren and Mikasa and Annie, all here, at the same time, and all of them Cursed. Of course, only Annie's here right now, but assuming the witch can actually _track_ those enchanted, then that should make us extra-suspicious. Heck, I think we're a suspiciousness beacon at this point. We've sent Eren and Mikasa out in the direction of two other Cursed, we're throwing a ball for the first time in ages…"

Hange rambled on, but Annie found herself hesitating when she reached for the doorknob. She scowled at herself. _There's nothing wrong with other people_ , she chided, but she still didn't open the door. What if they were changing? Were they busy?

Annie mulled over each and every option for longer than she would have liked to admit, to the point where she was so engrossed in her own thoughts that she stopped listening to the older girls' conversation.

 _Fwoosh_. The hallway torches all lit themselves on fire simultaneously. Annie jumped, making a splash, for she had stood there for so long her dress had begun to pool. After a brief scan of her surroundings, she settled her focus on the door again. Should she open it of her own accord, or not?

A little hesitantly, she softly knocked on the door.

"Hange, someone's at the door, can you go get it?" Petra's muffled voice called from inside.

"Of course!" Hange replied, and Annie found the door in front of her opened at an ungodly speed. She barely had time to process the semi-decked-out woman in front of her before said woman's eyes lit up and pulled her inside and began to pepper her with questions. "Annie! You're okay! Where's Armin? How'd you break free? Are you cold? Do you need blankets?"

Annie's teeth chattered slightly, then gently pulled herself out of Hange's grip. " _Hange_. Please do not touch me," she firmly said.

Hange's expression softened. "I'm sorry; I was just getting a little overexcited," she apologized, then her face lit up into a bright and excited smile again. "But! Can you tell me _everything_ once you're ready? I want to know every little detail!"

"Hange," Petra cut in, and pinched Annie's sleeve, showing the slow but steadily falling droplets of water that came from it. "She's soaking wet; the least you could do right now is give her a change of clothes. Her health is more important than immediate answers," she reprimanded, then let go of Annie's sleeve.

Hange loudly slapped her forehead with her palm. "Of course! I'm so sorry, I get distracted very easily, Annie. Lemme just, uh…" Hange bolted for the wardrobe and flung its doors open. "I need something for a petite hundred-fifty-something centimeter girl," she loudly said, flipping through racks of clothing of various styles and colors. She whipped her head back around to face Annie. "What's your favorite color, kiddo?"

Annie blinked. "Erm…" she began, then panicked. Picking the first thing that came to mind, she blurted out, "Blue."

"Blue, eh?" Petra asked, a smile tugging at her lips. "You'd look nice in a pale, icy blue. It would bring out your eyes. Rather matches your personality as well, from what I've seen of it."

"Gotcha," Hange replied, already scanning a rack of blue dresses of all shades and lengths.

At first, Annie was confused, but then it dawned on her. "Petra… is the wardrobe verbally controlled?" she asked.

"Yup," Petra proudly answered. "Ever since coming out of her Curse, Hange's been _obsessed_ with magic. She's mostly focused on how it works and where it comes from, but over the years, she's invented dozens upon dozens of spells and enchantments. It's a little crazy, actually. I'm still not sure where she gets all the magic to power all her crazy spells and experiments with, but here we are."

"Oh, we'll figure it out eventually; after all, that's what _research_ and _SCIENCE_ are for," chirruped Hange, a rather pleased smile on her face as she picked out a dress and handed it to Annie.

Annie took it, then looked uncomfortably around the room. "Erm," she awkwardly began, "I don't suppose you have a dressing chamber nearby?"

Hange paused. "We're all girls here, you can just change here. We won't look, and it'll be faster."

Annie shook her head. "I'd prefer to dress alone."

Petra waved a hand at the door. "There's a privy two doors down the hall. Come back and let me see you when you're done."

Annie shot the ginger a quizzical look. "Why?" she dared ask.

Petra smiled brightly at her. "Because I think you could look like a beautiful young lady. And also, there's going to be chocolate served at the ball, and you'll look awfully out of place if you just go in a nightgown."

"Ah, o-o–" Annie violently sneezed into her elbow then sniffed. "Must be catching ill," she mumbled, then snuffled again. She thanked Hange and Petra and clomped out the door.

* * *

"Hey Annie!"

She heard the words coming from behind her when she was halfway to the privy, and judging by the voice, it was Armin. She slowed to a stop and turned around.

He was drenched, much like she, but his smile was warm and he appeared happy. "The wardrobe was empty when I woke up, so I figured Hange could find some clothes for me," he explained, then noticed the dress and smiled even more brightly. "Going to the ball?"

Annie laughed a little. "Just for the chocolate," she admitted. "I'm not really one for dancing."

"Well I'm sure you'll look lovely," Armin blithely replied, then glanced over his shoulder for no apparent reason. The two stood in awkward silence for a few moments.

"I'll leave you to it," he finally said after a spell and scurried off towards Petra's room.

* * *

Petra told her that she looked lovely when Annie returned wearing the clean, blue dress. Frankly, it didn't matter so much to Annie that she looked nice, but rather, the new dress felt a thousand times more comfortable since it was _dry_.

Hange showed her the backdoor entrance into the ballroom, since Annie wasn't really one for attention, so as Annie stood in the back, nibbling on a tiny fragment of chocolate, she allowed her mind to wander as she watched the few guests attending dance.

In particular, something had seemed a little odd about Armin's mood.

_Is he mad at me? For what, thought? Did he catch ill? He probably caught ill from all the snow and cold and…_

Annie's thoughts after that point could only be described as crumbling into themselves before turning to ash.

She bit down hard on her chocolate, expelling her thoughts.

Armin walked up to her. For a long time, they only watched the dancers in the room, graceful or not, the only sound coming from either of them came from Annie grinding her teeth.

"You seem tense," Armin finally commented, not looking at her.

Annie's gaze didn't sway either and she simply remained quiet.

"Do you want to talk about it?"

Silence again.

"Alri–"

"Are you… are you mad at me?"

Armin blinked. "Why would I be mad at you?"

"In the hallway. Your happiness didn't seem genuine. It felt forced."

Annie turned to look at the boy as the smile fell away from his face. He bit his lip and said,

"Annie… I had a nightmare."


	13. Boar

Eren tread carefully through the fog, following the wailing sound, yet careful not to leave Mikasa's side.

"My name is Sasha. What's yours?" he heard Sasha question.

Then came a sniffle, a sob, and a choked out, "Connie. Connie Springer."

"This way," Eren softly muttered to his fiancée, then nearly silently ran off in the direction of the boy's voice. He could feel small puddles of blood underneath his paws; the blood clung to his fur and weighed his footsteps down.

He could hear Mikasa crunching leaves beneath her boots and snapping twigs behind him. He could make out a pale grey figure of a boy hunched over, clutching a mangled _something_ in his arms as he looked at the dryad kneeling in front of him.

"Who is that you're holding?" Sasha gently asked Connie.

Eren's paw touched something grossly soft and spongy and wet and instantly recoiled before leaning over to sniff it. It was a chunk of intestine, dark green and covered in pulp. His nose wrinkled at its rank stench.

Nearby, Connie sniffled again. "My s-sister," he answered, his voice cracking as he did so.

"Let's get you out of here," Sasha kindly said as Eren carefully tread around the guts and gore littering the ground, all the way to where the two were talking.

" _NO!_ " Connie screamed, clutching what was left of his sister close to his chest. " _I CAN'T LEAVE MY SISTER BEHIND._ "

"Connie, she's dead," Eren found himself bluntly saying. The boy's already red and puffy eyes filled with more tears and he hunched over.

"I can't just leave her body behind," Connie croaked out as Eren received a sharp smack to the head from Sasha.

" _Do not simply say it like_ _ **that**_ ," she hissed, ignoring the murderous glares Mikasa sent her way. "We'll take her with us. You _need_ to get out of here. You're under a curse," she kindly continued, extending out a hand.

Connie didn't take it, but he did slowly begin to get up. The mist began to clear, though it was still cloudy, and Eren got his first good look at the body.

The girl's long, ragged, silver hair was missing in chunks. Half of her face was completely covered in dried blood, the other half full of smudges. Her abdominal cavity was ripped open, but mostly empty. It was still slowly leaking blood. Her eyes, amazingly uncrushed, were wide open and glassy; her mouth was wide open, but not as though she were about to scream. It looked as though she were taking the deep breath that led to the scream. Eren was completely repulsed, yet found it hard to look away.

Connie cradled the body gently in his arms and took a hesitant step forward, looking like a newborn deer afraid to walk.

"That's right," Sasha coaxed, "You'll be fine. We'll get you two out of here."

Eren heard the faint crunching of hard dirt and grass and perked up. It _could_ be just another wild animal, yes, but from what he had noticed so far, animals tended to avoid this place, and he could see why. Though he couldn't sense it nearly as clearly as Sasha could (from what she told them, anyway), there was still a very distinct ominousity to the area. It scared him.

"Mikasa," he softly growled, getting up from his haunches but remaining low to the ground in a defensive stance.

The crunching footsteps drew nearer as Mikasa cautiously pulled out her knife and assumed a defensive position as well.

" _Somebody's been comin' to my house…_ " a low voice from the shadows snarled, drawing ever nearer.

"C'mon, Connie, we'll yet ya out of here," Sasha said, an accent showing itself as her voice went up half an octave and was tinged with panic.

" _ **Somebody's**_ _been freein' my livestock…_ " the mystery voice continued.

"Run," Eren said to no one in particular. Perhaps it was just Mikasa. Perhaps it was to their acquaintances. He wasn't sure. But as he bared his teeth and braced himself for whatever was coming, his intuition told him that if anyone but him tried to take on the owner of the mystery voice, they'd be pretty close to doomed.

From his peripherals, he could see Sasha grab Connie's arm and begin to pull him more forcefully away from the scene, but Mikasa simply adjusted her grip on her knife and held her ground. Eren gave her a quick, annoyed glance.

" _An'_ _ **somebody's**_ _gonna_ _ **pay**_ _for it,_ " the voice breathed in a dangerously low voice. For a few moments, it was silent.

" _Run_!" Eren yelled in those few moments, and while their comrades did, Mikasa didn't.

" _I won't leave you!_ " she cried in response, just as something from the dark lunged at them with a menacing snarl.

Time seemed to slow down for Eren. From the pitch dark of the misty forest leaped an _enormous_ hairy boar with beady, bloodlusting eyes and cracked, grey-white tusks longer than Mikasa's forearm. Its stiff, wiry black hairs stood on end, barely bending backwards in the wind.

Instinctively, Eren felt his back legs tense as he prepared to launch himself at the enormous feral pig.

Eren never took the leap. Something seemed to force him to stand still in time as the pale grey clouds above began cry. His hearing began to fade and soon all he could hear was his heartbeat, clear as a bell, as the drizzling rain fell all around him as Mikasa took a step forward, her expression one of stony anger and determination.

 _Ba-boom_.

She lifted her arm, a scream seeming to escape her lips as she began to run towards her attacker with her knife held high, pointed straight at its target, the boar's heart.

 _Ba-boom_.

The boar appeared to let out an unearthly shriek as well, tossing its head as it soared through the air at Eren's fiancée, its intentions clearly to stop her.

But not kill her.

Why was that?

Eren, over his years as a wolf, had learned to read an animal's intent by their eyes. There was bloodlust in the boar, most definitely yes, but not for Mikasa. Rather, it seemed far more bent on stopping her. All the bloodlust seemed directed not at him and Mikasa, but rather, Sasha and Connie.

 _Ba-boom_.

Sasha and Connie.

Sasha and Connie.

_Sasha and Connie._

Eren, lost in his own little world, had completely forgotten that those two were still escaping. He had to free them. He had to get them out of here.

His heartbeat faded into the background as he blinked a few hearing slowly returned to him, the deafening screeches of war almost taking it away again.

Mikasa's knife struck the boar, its silver blade sinking deep into its tough skin to the tender flesh beneath, as Eren once again prepared again to pounce on his prey, this time nothing holding him back from doing so.

The boar squealed and thrashed, kicking the raven-haired girl in the chest and knocking all the air from her lungs. Mikasa blinked in surprise, dropping her dagger and staggering backwards in shock, trying to recover her breath. The boar ran around the clearing, kicking up clods of dirt as it did so.

Enraged, Eren snarled, and as the boar came back around, he launched himself at it, teeth bared and ready to sink deep into the creature's flesh.

But, strangely enough, the boar's form morphed and bubbled and changed as it ran, growing taller, leaner, and lighter, until it took the shape of a tall, blond, bearded man running nearly nude through the clearing. And with this new, much smaller form, came a much smaller margin of error for attacks, causing Eren to completely miss what he, in the spur of the moment, deduced was most likely the witch. If they could be called a _witch_ anymore.

Eren landed hard on the well-packed dirt, painfully scraping his foot pads against the multitude of small rocks lodged in the dirt. He grimaced from the pain, but at the thought that he might finally be free, that he might finally be human again, forced him to ignore the thin, stinging needles of pain that prickled on his feet.

The blond man slowed to a stop and started laughing. "Little wolf, do you think I had forgotten you?" he asked, an amused expression on his face.

Eren said nothing; he simply faced the man and snarled aggressively.

"And you, Little Red Riding Hood, don't you want your happy ending? Your happily ever after?"

Mikasa was still wheezing a few meters away, but glared daggers straight into the man's soul as she struggled to breathe. She also refused to utter a word.

The man laughed long and loud again. "You'll see someday," he mused before starting to cackle once again.

Fed up with the man's act, Eren sprinted at him, ready to rip out chunks of the man's thigh the second he got close enough. He could feel the saliva building up in his mouth at the thought of immobilizing the one who had transformed him, the one who gave him his Curse, before ending him entirely. He'd _dreamed_ of this day for years, and finally, _finally_ he could finish it here.

But his jaws never closed on flesh. The blond man's legs began to mist up into green smoke before the rest of his body followed and he flew away, screeching.

Eren skid to a halt for a second time, still overwhelmed by his incredible desire for blood. He wrinkled his nose disdainfully at the mere loincloth that was left behind by the man-turned-mist-cloud.

Close by him, Mikasa fell to her knees, exhausted but not dead. She was breathing easier now, and that calmed Eren down and he limped slowly back to his fiancée, the pain inflicted on his poor feet now a dozen times clearer. Tiredly, he lay down next to her and she wrapped her arms around him in a hug. Both of their breathing patterns became slow and rhythmic, allowing the adrenaline of the fight dissipate within them.

The couple sat there in silence for what felt like forever. The floor of the clearing was dappled with warm, bright splashes of sunlight when Eren finally stirred.

"What do you think the witch meant by a happy ending?" he mumbled.

Mikasa rolled over so that she lay on her back, staring at the tree boughs above them. She shielded her eyes from the sun that shone through the leaves and replied, "I'm not sure. What do you think?"

Eren rolled onto his back with her, but since his joints didn't have the same range of flexibility as a human's, soon rolled back onto his stomach. He blew at a fuzzy puffball of a dandelion in front of him. "I don't know either."

Together they lay in the clearing in comfortable silence for a few more minutes, simply enjoying one another's company.

Mikasa sat up and gently stroked Eren's fur. "Thank you for fighting for me," she quietly said.

"Nah. You do most of the fighting anyway. It was the least I could do. But that reminds me.

"When you were fighting the boar, something froze me in time. In those few moments, I saw its eyes, and they were full of bloodlust. But not towards you; it was towards Sasha and Connie, wherever they are now. I just thought it was weird that he wanted to kill them but keep you, me, or both of us alive for a happy ending."

"That _is_ very odd. I can't possibly imagine why, though."

Eren looked up at her, a shock of panic jumpstarting his heart. "What if– _what if_ –" he began, unable to finish his sentence. He gulped. "Do you remember the original story of _Little Red Riding Hood_?"

"Yes, of course."

"What if he makes you _kill_ me for your happy ending?" he asked, his voice an octave higher than usual and feeling very frightened.

Mikasa looked aghast. "I won't leave you," she promised, pulling him close for a hug.

Eren's heart rate calmed down once more as Mikasa planted a dainty butterfly kiss on his head.

"I love you, Eren."

"I love you, too, Mikasa."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> *happy snuggle noises* i just. really like the way this chapter ended. and like. did i describe gore before in this story? oh yeah, there was the nightmare chapter. why is it always the eremika chapters that are all deathy and bloody. hmm.


	14. Underwater

"Annie… I had a nightmare."

Annie's eyes grew large. "What happened?" she concernedly asked, then with a tinge of anger said, "I thought you couldn't _get_ nightmares here; Hange said it was a protected area!"

"Relax, Annie, relax. It wasn't anything special," Armin assured her, reaching out to put a hand on her shoulder, but hesitated when he remembered her reaction the day before when he tried to comfort her.

"What happened?" Annie asked, much more calmly now.

Armin took a deep breath, then stroked his peach fuzz softly. He hummed for a moment or two, trying to remember the fading details of his dream. "Well…"

* * *

_Falling, falling, falling. Armin could feel his heart swell, nearly to bursting, with pure, undulated happiness. as he fell dozens upon dozens of feet down a waterfall. He'd gotten her back, his wonderful, beautiful, golden, flower of a girl whom he…_

_Whom he loved._

_Armin blinked his eyes open. Her eyes were closed and her expression serene; he could feel her breathing calmly in his arms. This girl that he had met just a day ago, was alive and safe in his arms. He could scarcely believe he could love her so soon, but once the thought came to him, nothing else seemed to fit quite so perfectly._

_His happiness nearly blinded him, however; he failed to notice the sweet-smelling scent of wildflowers in Annie's hair fading away._

" _Annie," he murmured, closing his eyes once more and burying his face in her hair. She stirred slightly, then let out a contented sigh as they fell, fell, fell._

_Armin could have stayed like that forever, simply falling away from the moonlight into the darkness with Annie in his arms._

_But she began to fade, slowly at first, just little specks of her here and there, little golden sparks getting blown away in the wind like pollen. Then, she began to fade faster and faster, fragments of her flying upwards into the oblivion._

_Helpless, Armin gazed up at the moon as he fell with his back towards the ground, his now empty arms reaching out for the girl that was no longer there. The beautifully pale, white light of the moon flickered for an instant, as did the stars, before an inkwell in the sky spilled and everything was plunged into pitch darkness._

_All around him felt empty, barren, hollow. Lifeless._

_He closed his eyes, but he couldn't truly tell if they were open or closed. Shivering, he instinctively curled his limbs closer to the center; his heartbeat began to slow down, his thoughts began to speed up, and his twisting stomach was buzzing._

_Closing his eyes once more and swallowing a growing lump in his throat, Armin braced himself for when he finally made impact with the ground._

_Wind began to whistle in his ears and the smell of salt began to fill the air, but before he could realize what was happening, his back hit the surface of whatever it was. His eyes shot open and all the air was knocked out of his lungs, causing him to instinctively gasp, only to get a burning, stinging lungful of salt water._

_His previously slow heart began to beat far more quickly and violently in his chest, his lungs refused to work, his panicked thoughts whizzing by at a million paces per second. He was falling much more slowly now, or was he sinking? At any rate, it was the least of his worries._

_What little he could force his lungs to take in burned his throat and chest. His legs were thrashing out of their own accord as he writhed painfully underwater, but his arms stayed fast at his throat, as though trying to change the water into air._

_Then, all at once, it all stopped. He was able to get out of the fetal position he had found curling tightly into, his legs were calm, and he could move his arms again. However, his eyelids felt heavy, but he turned his head up to the sky anyway, as he had done thousands of time in the past, to look at the stars as his vision began to fade away at the edges._

_The moon was still an inkblot, lost inside the night, but the stars, they were a-twinkling, blinking in and out of sight._

_A fleeting flash of silver stopped before him, its silent stare never wavering as he slowly sank down to the sea floor._

_Armin could feel his life force ebbing. He was going to die like this and he accepted it. Whatever the silver wanted, he was no use to it now._

_His now drowsy mind wandered back to yesterday, with the silver doe and her guidance. She brought them to… to… the castle, was it? He could no longer remember; his memory was already fading._

_A wave of shockingly cold water pulsed his way, refreshing him and making his eyes shoot open. He began to breathe again, and while it still hurt, the chilly water revived his brain somewhat. He was underwater. He needed to get air._ Which way was up?

_His legs began to kick underneath him once more and Armin decided to go with his instincts. Being the prince of a landlocked country, he had never learned how to swim with tides, but windy days on the lake helped a little as the ocean water began to toss him about as he grew closer and closer to the surface._

_The water was getting lighter now. His lungs were on fire, nearly exploding, really. His vision was blackening again, his clarity of mind dwindling, but the surface of the water was so, so,_ so _painfully near, no pun* intended._

_His legs felt like lead, slowing him and pulling him down, urging him to sink into the depths once again, but truth be told, he could hardly feel it anymore. He was simply a puppet, being controlled by someone on the outside. It was a rather out-of-body experience. The feeling grew stronger and stronger as the surface drew nearer and nearer. He could see the patterns of the wind, tossing and chopping the surface now, just one more kick now…_

* * *

"... Then my leg jerked and I woke up," he finished.

Annie was quiet, but at this point, Armin figured it was safe to assume that she was generally just a very reserved girl and waited patiently for her to respond.

She finished up her tiny remaining piece of chocolate and swallowed. "Do you think it means anything?" she softly asked, not making eye contact with him.

Armin frowned slightly. "Normally, I'd say no, but considering the circumstances, I wouldn't say it's outside our realm of possibility."

Annie bit her bottom lip gently.

"Why, what would you suggest?"

He didn't get a response for some time.

"Why would the witch be targeting _you_?" she pointed out.

Armin blinked. "That's true," he admitted.

"You're not Cursed. I don't think she even knows you're here, that you're one of us. So why would the alp or mare attack you, if that's what happened?" Annie continued, a look of genuine concern on her face.

"Annie, when you were asleep–" Armin began, and Annie visibly tensed up. "–did you have a tendency for nightmares?"

Annie scrunched up her nose and closed her eyes as she took a deep, slightly shaky breath, holding it for a few seconds before slowly letting it out again. She repeated it several times, and it made Armin feel guilty for asking her to remember her time under the spell.

"Well… yes," she confessed after a few moments, so softly that Armin had to strain himself just to make out what she was saying. "But sometimes I can't tell if some of those memories were a just a dream. They were nightmares either way."

Armin thoughtfully stroked the peach fuzz on his chin again. "Perhaps an alp is following you," he suggested. "A beautiful yet traumatized maiden trapped in an apparent eternal sleep seems like it would be a feast for them, and even after you woke up, assuming you did, you would still need to sleep. And since alps can cause nightmares as well as feed off of them, maybe a couple made a nest in your hair and have been affecting everyone."

Annie looked offended. "Are you calling me infested?"

"No, of course not...! Yes… Maybe. A _little_ bit."

Annie punched him in the arm, glaring at him after she did so.

"I deserved that, but hear me out: what if the _Witch_ left an alp with you? Since it would be one of her minions, she could easily recall it to keep tabs on you for whatever reason, and by giving you constant nightmares, it could live forever, feeding off your fear. And, since it's with you, that's probably how it ended up on the castle grounds: you probably inadvertently protected it. It all makes sense!" Armin said, the words and ideas falling from his mouth faster than he could realize them in his mind, getting louder and more excited as he spoke, thus attracting a few strange looks from the guests.

Annie scrunched up her nose again and made a face.

"Well, I mean, it makes _sense_ ," Armin pointed out.

"Yeah, but the thought of the Witch having had access to all my thoughts and fears and nightmares for a _century_ is just– just–" Annie shivered. " _Ughh_."

Armin sincerely nodded, remembering that she had been invaded and violated physically; learning that she might have been mentally as well probably sickened her to no end.

At that moment, Armin had an overwhelming urge to crack his knuckles, then stretch out his legs, and before he knew it, he suddenly felt full of restless energy. He glanced around the room a couple times and felt far too cooped up to be content simply being in the ballroom.

"Are you okay?" Annie asked upon noticing his sudden inability to stop fidgeting.

"This room feels too small for me," he confessed, shifting his weight between his feet _constantly_. "Care to go outside with me?"

Annie hesitated. "Okay," she agreed, and the two walked across the room to get outside as casually as they could.

Armin opened the door and a cool night breeze blew gently on both of their faces. Rose thorns tugged at both of their clothes, picking apart the seams and weaves in places, but neither of them really minded.

Armin let out a breath, the fresh air immediately calming his restless limbs, and it condensed into a miniature, but thick, cloud of fog in front of his face. Annie laughed and blew a jet of fog into his face.

Now laughing as well, Armin looked up at the pitch-black night sky with its smattering of silver stars and the longer he stared, the more faint stars revealed themselves to him. He could see them a lot better than he had his first night since there were no boughs blocking his view, and noticed that not all the constellations looked as they did in the human realm.

" _Lynx, Draco, Cassiopeia_ ," Annie whispered beside him, staring up at the multitude of stars above them as well. She turned to him, an excited smile on her face. "The stars. They look exactly as they did before."

Armin was glad that she appeared to have forgotten of the alp so soon and grinned back at her, seemingly breathing steam through his nostrils as he did so. "That's nice to know," he said, then looked up again as the tail end of a shooting star caught his eye.

"Simply beautiful," he sighed.

"Who?" Annie cautiously asked.

Armin lowered his gaze from the heavens and back down to the blonde girl next to him. His voice caught in his throat, and for a moment he legitimately considered telling Annie it was her. He bit his tongue before he could make any rash decisions and upon remembering her backstory, decided against it. Instead, he simply nudged her shoulder and gestured up at the sky.

"There was a falling star," he told her. "If I remember correctly, there's going to be a shower of them for the next couple days. They'll grant wishes if you ask them."

Annie's eyes brightened considerably at his words. "Really, truly?" she breathed, shifting her weight to the balls of her feet so that she looked like a songbird about to take flight. "I've always been told that that wasn't true."

Armin laughed. "No," he truthfully told her. "The scientists back in Shiganshina said that the stars aren't truly falling and that they had no power to grant wishes. But it's nice to dream, isn't it? And like I said before, anything is possible here; it's the fairy realm."

"Oh," Annie said, deflating a little bit. She looked up at the sky nonetheless, her eye flicking from star to star to connect them into constellations.

The two stargazed and searched for falling stars outside together, but when the torches inside the ballroom lighting the yard in front of them grew dim, Armin gently nudged her again. Annie briefly flinched, but recovered remarkably fast.

"It's been a lovely evening, but I believe it's time to retire now," Armin told the shorter blonde in an overly cordial tone, motioning towards the glass door that they had escaped out of.

Annie curtseyed back at him. "It's been a pleasure chatting with you, sir," she said with a slightly joking tone, mimicking his particularly formal way of speaking. "I hope we may do this again sometime."

With those words and a faint smile, Annie noiselessly slipped back inside the castle, leaving Armin staring after her.

"Yeah," he sighed. "I do, too."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> *slowly sips milk* the calm before the storm, guys.  
> i noticed i tend to open up the last couple aruani chapters up with i guess some slight recap. i mean you guys aren't stupid why the heck would i need to do _recap_. i guess it just flows better. eh.  
>  also, you guys have no idea how hard it was to write the line "The moon was still an inkblot, lost inside the night, but the stars, they were a-twinkling, blinking in and out of sight." like. do you realize how hard poetry and meter are? it hard.


	15. Apple

After what felt like an eternity, (when in reality, it was closer to just fifteen minutes) Eren picked himself up off the ground next to his fiancée and gently kneaded his paws on her stomach in an attempt to get her to get up as well. Mikasa laughed lightly in response and pushed him affectionately away, sitting up as she did so. It was a nice break in mood after such an intense fight that neither one of them regretted just taking a break from it all.

Eren pranced around Mikasa, nonverbally pestering her to get up, earning some soft laughter as she did start to stand.

"I'm ready, I'm ready," she giggled, bending over to nonchalantly stroke him a few times. She sighed ever so slightly, letting the last of her emotions out and resuming her normal poker face. "We have to locate Connie and Sasha again," she simply said, scanning their surroundings for any possible clues as to where the two had gone.

"Right," Eren agreed, also significantly calmer than just a few mere seconds before. He took a few steps forward, much more carefully than when there was fog, Mikasa noted. Most likely to make _absolutely positively_ sure he didn't step in any off-bits of human lying around.

Mikasa uneasily glanced behind her, at the grass, where a few squished bits of Connie's still unnamed sister's intestines still remained. Her stomach lurched violently, bile rose to her throat, and her memory briefly flashed back to the nightmare Eren had had the night before at the sight of the organs in the harsh, plain, light of day.

Eren trotted nonchalantly ahead of her, now seemingly indifferent about the gore in front of them. He twisted his neck around and looked at her with concern.

"I'm fine, Eren," Mikasa insisted, waving his words away before he could even say them. She took a few steps forward before she began to hit her stride beside him. "Just… thinking."

"Suit yourself," Eren nonchalantly replied and trotted forward, though now Mikasa noted he was taking great care not to step on any bits of gory mush and at the same time, appear not to care. She smiled slightly, snorting a little at the pettiness of it.

At first, they walked around in circles in the clearing, since they had been so absorbed in their battle that while they knew Connie and Sasha had run off, neither one of them noticed in which direction they escaped to. After about half a round, however, they stumbled upon two unsteady sets of footprints: one barefoot, one shoed. Eren sniffed around, confirming without a doubt that they were indeed looking at Connie and Sasha's footsteps.

Almost instinctively, Mikasa silenced her footsteps so that they hardly left a trace on the tender spring grass, wanting to make sure that, should the Witch return, they would not be able to track them down through basic tracking skills. Mikasa's survival instincts seemed to kick in full-force, but not in the adrenaline-filled fight-or-flight instincts; no, her instincts this time were focused primarily on prevention of disaster.

It wasn't very long before Mikasa could faintly hear Sasha's voice coming in on a breeze from up ahead.

" _Oh for Pete's sake, Connie, look at you! Stick thin, visible ribs, with hardly a lick o' meat or fat on you!_ "

Mikasa looked down at her fiancé, and he gazed back, cocking his head at her, in a " _How do we approach this?_ " kind of way. She shrugged in response and continued following the sound of Sasha's voice.

" _You look like you haven't eaten in weeks! Come on, you need to eat; it's just a wild apple._ "

An apple. For some reason, just the name of the fruit, however common it may be, put Mikasa on edge. Perhaps it was because it was linked with many fairy tales and myths, perhaps because she had never had any particular fondness for the fruit itself (more likely the former than the latter, however), but either way, Mikasa did not feel good about Sasha feeding one to Connie.

" _I'll be_ fine _, Sasha, really. Just lead me to the path to the nearest village, and I'll manage just fine._ "

" _Nonsense, Connie! Here, I'll take a bite first, just to show you that you'll be okay._ "

Mikasa frowned and picked up the pace. Nothing about these woods felt right, and while it felt far less dark and grim where they currently compared to the Witch's clearing, the entire forest was most likely firmly rooted in the Witch's domain. There wasn't a thing in the world that would allow Mikasa to trust anything in those woods except for the dryads themselves.

The dappled sunlight seemed to grow weaker, but more frequent, around Eren and her, looking more like moonlight than sunlight despite the fact that it wasn't even dusk yet. _Then again_ , Mikasa mused as she ran, _time does travel differently in the fairies' realm compared to our own._

She heard the sharp crack of Sasha's teeth biting into the crisp flesh of an apple. Mikasa broke through a thicket, finding herself standing in front of an enormous wild apple tree laden with large, pinkish-red apples. Connie leaned against the trunk, his sister nowhere in sight, and Sasha sat upon a large, low-hanging branch, with an amicable expression on her face and an apple with a large bite that nearly reached the core taken out of it.

"See?" Sasha asked, still chewing the apple she had bitten off. "It's _perfectly_ safe to eat; I'm not sure why you're not wantin' to eat it." She swallowed and took another bite.

Eren squeezed through the bushes behind them. His worried eyes searched the clearing, and after finding nothing of concerned, breathed a nearly inaudible sigh of relief; only Mikasa could hear it, and even then, just barely. "So you're all okay," he began, but with a sharp crack, Sasha's face unexpectedly turned to one of shock, then contorting into one of pain, her cheeks puffing out as though she were about to vomit before turning a violent shade of blue.

No one could do anything, lost in their shock as the dryad's eyes rolled back into her head and she fell off the tree, the apple rolling out of her hand as it hit the ground.

Eren was the first to recover, shaking his head out and bounding over to Sasha, followed by Mikasa. Connie blinked a few times, then swallowed, seemingly unable to do anything else.

Sasha's muscles began to jerk as she lay on the ground; she looked possessed. Not many things frightened Mikasa anymore, but this was one of them. However, despite her fears, she took action and tried to keep the dryad from moving as much as she could so that Eren could check out what was in the apple she ate without fear of being inadvertently harmed by her flailing limbs.

The wolf sniffed at the apple pulp left in Sasha's mouth and wrinkled his nose. "It smells like bitter almonds," he commented as he backed away. Mikasa released Sasha from her hold as the latter began to relax. She appeared asleep now.

"Bitter almonds?" Connie asked, his dull eyes brightening just a tad. "A cousin of mine had bitter almonds before; they had a similar reaction to what Sasha had just now, as though possessed."

"Oh? Well what did you do?" Mikasa wearily asked.

Connie shrugged. "Read about it in a letter from the aunt. Never cared enough to find out how they solved it. Sorry." He shifted his position from leaning on the apple tree to crouching beneath it and crawled over to where Sasha lay and stared intently at her face.

"She turned my sister's body into a sapling," he quietly said. "She told me we couldn't bring her to town; she'd scare everyone and that besides, I had to let go of her eventually." His eyes were watering, a small tear running down his cheek; though he wasn't crying as piteously as he was in the clearing, Mikasa's heart still ached with sympathy for the boy. Bits of apple mush fell from the corner of Sasha's still ajar mouth. Connie glanced over at her, then stuck his fingers in the girl's mouth and dug out the remaining mush. Mikasa couldn't help but feel somewhat appalled.

Connie flicked the last few bits of mush and saliva off his fingers as the couple stared at him, neither one of them able to say anything. Between the three of them, Sasha began to audibly breathe, something they had all failed to notice she had ceased. Her eyelids fluttered and her fingers groped the grass beneath her.

She painstakingly sat up and blinked a few times and spat out a crushed apple seed.

"Don't eat apple seeds, kids," she croaked out, cracking the best smile she could for the three of them, "They have poison."

Mikasa found their parting strangely disheartening. After all, she and Eren had only come for the Witch, ended up finding Connie and Sasha, and getting to know them over the fleeting moments of a mere several hours. How was it that they had grown so attached so soon?

* * *

_I suppose we've just grown so used to being on our own that any company is welcome_ , Mikasa mused as she and Eren waved goodbye to Sasha in order to escort Connie back to Dauper without frightening any of the citizens. She reached inside her pocket and felt the smooth bone and soft, fragile flowers of Sasha's floral antlers, reminding herself to give them to Mr. Braus when they returned to Dauper.

She and Eren walked with Connie along a soft, ill-defined, dirt path through the woods. None of them said anything, each preoccupied with their own thoughts, and so it continued until it was nearly dusk and the road forked. Connie insisted on going in the opposite direction alone, apparently knowing where he was after recalling something similar when he and his sister journeyed through the woods to the Witch's house in the first place.

Mikasa looked up at the purpling sky as they walked, now alone, feeling rather lonesome now that it was just her and Eren again. She still wasn't sure why this was the case. After all, she had travelled with her fiancé for three years, completely alone the entire time, yet it was only as of late that she longed for more companions.

"You're feeling lonely too, aren't you," Eren bluntly stated as they neared Dauper. The fair they had travelled through seemed almost sleepy now, the crowds visibly far thinner than they had been in the morning.

Mikasa blinked in surprise; neither of them had said anything for seemingly _hours_. "I suppose," she admitted. "Feels a little strange. I have you, after all."

Eren nodded, slowing down from a brisk trot to nearly a stop. "Do you want kids someday?" he asked simply.

The question hit Mikasa like a ton of bricks, stopping her in her tracks. She turned around to face the wolf, mouth agape but without anything to say. "Where did that come from?" she finally managed to sputter.

Eren shrugged as he walked past her. "It's just that you seemed so at home caring for the Cursed, and after getting married, the next logical step would be to have kids, would it not?"

Married. Mikasa had forgotten what they had planned on doing after returning Eren to his natural form and, if possible, find his mother again. Sure, the idea of marrying him had always been in the back of her mind for _years_ now, but that's just where it stayed: in the back of her mind. At some point during their journey together, they had grown to love each other, but the word _fiancé_ became just that, a word.

 _Children. I suppose they would be nice_ , she thought, but pushed them to the back of her mind again as the two of them entered Kartoffel Inn again. Mr. Braus's dim eyes brightened a little at the sight of their faces; she doubted he got such unusual guests twice in a day regularly.

"We found your daughter," she said in a low voice, sliding onto one of the barstools in front of him. Eren scrabbled onto one himself, leaving claw marks and wood shavings on the chair in the process, but Mr. Braus no longer seemed to care. His face lit up with hope and he put the glass he was polishing down so that he could better focus on what Mikasa was going to say.

"She's part dryad and has been living as one for the last couple of years," Mikasa explained, reaching into her cloak pocket as she did so, pulling out Sasha's nubby antlers and placing them gently on the counter. "She misses you and gave you her antlers so that you wouldn't forget her. She won't be back for some time, if ever. I'm sorry, sir."

The man's face fell and his gaze wandered over to the antlers. He picked up the pieces of bone and rubbed them gently between his fingers, his expression softening into one of love and nostalgia. "Ah knew she was a dryad alrea'y; her ma was halffa one," he explained, twiddling Sasha's antlers around in his hands. "Ah jus' assumed she'd ne'er grow inta' one, wi' it bein' such a small part'a her." He chuckled, then pocketed the antlers. "Thanks fer tellin' me, though. Care t' stay th' night? Gettin' awful dark out there."

Mikasa and Eren exchanged glances. He was right, it _was_ getting late. Despite the fact that Levi's castle was protected from harm, things had gotten through before, and they had no guarantee that they would be safe all the way there at night.

"Sure," Mikasa answered, reaching into her basket for a few coins to pay the man. There was nothing wrong with staying away from the castle for a night, and to some degree, she suspected that Hange _expected_ them to. After all, what was the worst that could happen while they were gone?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ah. as i write these notes, this is the last chapter until you guys are up to date. though, by the time it gets posted, there'll probably be one more left in queue. but just one more. y'all are almost up to date.  
> i actually planned on making this chapter a little longer originally, with enough time for them to get back to levi's castle and chat a little more about marriage and kids and stuff, but like. it was getting late when i was writing it. deadlines were approaching, and i was like. nyeeeh. some other day. i hope.  
> i actually originally planned on titling this chapter "cyanide", after the poisonous chemical found in apple seeds. i did a bit of research into cyanide poisoning for this chapter, actually, and while naturally occurring cyanide in apples isn't nearly enough to kill someone, i read one of the symptoms of cyanide poisoning is seizures so. i tried. i think the poisoning is reasonable considering well. i think y'all know. or can figure it out.  
> i know you're not supposed to restrain someone having a seizure, but they didn't know any better.


	16. Shatter

Annie had always been a heavy sleeper. From before she was first Cursed to while she was under her enchanted slumber, there was hardly a thing in the world that could wake Annie up once she fell asleep. Heck, if Annie recalled correctly, she slept through a fire in the kitchens when she was nine; she only learned about it the following morning when all the maids were vigorously scrubbing away at the burnt walls and floors of the kitchen.

Annie woke up slowly, lying in bed with her eyes closed but mind fully aware for a full twenty seconds before sitting up and stretching. She yawned, then tugged at her dress, which she had not bothered to change out of from the night prior. _This dress is really soft,_ she thought, the only thing she was capable of thinking for the moment, thinking the same thought over and over again in her head as she rubbed the sleep out of her eyes.

 _This dress is really soft,_ she thought as she gently combed out the major snags and snarls in her short, blonde hair.

 _This dress is really soft,_ she thought as she patted the sleeves, peering into her empty wardrobe and not processing anything.

"A hun… hun… _hundred_ fifty-three centimeters," she yawned, stretching again because her muscles, though stretched perfectly well and she knew it, ached to be stretched again. Multi-colored dresses appeared in front of Annie and she squinted at them, unable to process what to do next.

When at last her groggy mind allowed her to function semi-properly for the morning, she chose a dress, stretched for the third (or perhaps it was fourth at this point? Annie had lost track of how many times she had stretched) time that morning, and padded barefoot out the door into the cool, stone hallway.

At first, she could hear nothing but the steady, rhythmic, echoing pitter-patter of her feet hitting the floor as she walked, but considering how dead the hallway had been the night before while the ball was still in full swing, she guessed that it was a rarely tread pathway anyway. But as she walked through the empty corridor, she noticed it got a little more chaotic. Faint black marks were burned or etched into the walls and floor, a few tapestries looked rattled here and there, the frame of a painting was cracked. It was the little things that Annie usually hardly noticed that popped out to her this morning, scaring away the last few snippets of sleepiness that clung to her.

She gently touched an ashen streak on the wall and blackened rock dust came off as she swiped. Most of it floated away in the air, causing shafts of sunlight peeking through the windows to be visible, but mostly what it did was make Annie more alert and rather suspicious. _Something happened the night prior after I went to bed,_ she resolutely thought as she flicked away the dust on her fingers, _and I'm going to find out what_.

She silenced her footsteps, unsure of what potential dangers could potentially be lying ahead. She dared not think for a moment that it might not be loud, unable to trust herself and her sleeping habits. _After all, I did sleep through some loud stuff back then_ , she grimly remembered.

As she made her way towards where her corridor and the one leading towards the main caste intersected, she noticed that everything was eerily… silent. As the damage grew more and more extreme, with fallen art and heavily chipped stones appearing more often than untouched ones, Annie became more and more on edge. She couldn't focus her vision in any one direction, she found herself listening intently for something she wasn't sure of, and her anxious mind kept her busy with frightening thoughts of finding everyone dead and a monster alive and thirsting for her blood and flesh.

Annie found herself trembling ever so slightly as she rounded the corner and headed towards the door.

She stared at her trembling hand a few seconds before touching the doorknob, gripping it lightly, almost reverently, as she did so. Her hand quivered as she did so, and though she was hardly even touching the thing, the doorknob shook with her. She worried that it would fall off if she pulled on it.

Taking a deep and calming breath, Annie steadied herself. Breathing in and out in sync with every fourth, pounding heartbeat sounding in her ears, Annie calmed down and opened the door, not daring to open her eyes as she stepped out into the entrance hall.

Nothing greeted her but the soft whisperings of the wind. Thinking that perhaps her intuition had been wrong and nothing serious happened the night before, Annie cracked open an eye to check. Annie gently gasped in shock when she saw everything, her hand automatically rising to cover her gaping mouth.

The wind, in hindsight, should have been her first hint that her intuition was indeed correct: the entrance hall was nearly in shambles. A sizable section of the wall was bust in, with dust and debris littered everywhere; why Levi hadn't cleaned it up yet was beyond Annie. Many panes of window glass were cracked, if not chipped or shattered, their shards strewn all around the great hall as well. Broken, dead branches and crushed, brown leaf fragments were scattered near the gaping hole in the wall. Spots were singed into the formerly well-kept carpet; there were streaks of black ash everywhere on it.

Annie couldn't fathom what could have possibly happened the night before, and the thought of finding out the answer made her morbidly curious.

"H-Hange?" She called for the only person she could think of that would have her answers, but at the same time feared that they were no longer alive. After all, the damages were extreme; had she not known any better, Annie never would have guessed that just the night before, there had been an extravagant and beautifully executed ball.

Her breath hitched in her throat. _Was_ it just the night before? Or had, by some way or miracle (though perhaps the word curse would have been better), she fallen into a hundred years' slumber again?

"Petra!" she cried, panic rising in her throat. " _Hange!_ "

Fearful tears began to form in the corner of her eyes, she wrung her hands until her fingers were numb, and she grew dizzy. She was, in every sense of the word, panicking.

"Annie?" a familiar voice called to her.

Frightened, Annie whipped her head in the direction of the voice, which came from the top of the staircase. Through her blurred vision, she could barely make out the messy rat's nest of brown hair that belonged to Hange. Annie's chest loosened up, allowing her to breathe as her tears changed from fear to relief. Annie staggered towards Hange as the latter rushed down the stairs as fast as she could and barrelled towards the former before realizing that she probably wouldn't appreciate a tackle hug.

"What happened?" the blonde sniffled, roughly wiping several tears off her ruddy cheeks.

Hange skidded to a stop in front of her, her expression growing pained. "Well, the Witch came, to say the least. But…" she slowly began, then gestured at the mess of a room the hall was, "She… they… _it_ was more powerful than anticipated."

Annie's remaining tears dried up as Hange struggled to find words.

"We were caught off guard. The ball was just ending, at around midnight, of course, when this _enormous_ white unicorn crashed through the front gate, looking like it was made of pure rage-fire, then through the wall."

"Hange, where's everyone else?" Annie weakly interrupted. "They're not gone, are they?"

Hange chewed her tongue, visibly conflicted. Her uncertainty made Annie scared.

"We're all here, for the most part, from what I can tell," Hange carefully answered, clearly avoiding answering Annie's question directly. "But not everyone is really _there_ , per se."

Annie opened her mouth to ask a follow-up question, but her keen ears picked up the soft rolling about of rocks behind Hange and her. She turned around and saw Eren and Mikasa, just returning from their trip, taking in the ruined hall in shock, just as she had been just a few moments earlier.

"What _happened_?" Eren called, aghast.

"That's what I was asking," Annie mumbled under her breath, her tone sharply swinging from frightened and shy to sharp and irritated.

"Er…" Hange began, halfheartedly holding up a hand as though that would explain everything, then with a sigh, lowered it again. She gestured towards the stairs and began shuffling towards them. "I'll explain on the way. You come too, Annie."

* * *

Hange filled Eren and Mikasa in as she led them and Annie through the upper floors of the castle, elaborating on the story more than she had with Annie and giving the latter more of a reason to pay attention as they walked.

"So it just crashed in… and disappeared? But that doesn't make any sense," Mikasa said.

"I'm surprised you still think everything should make perfect sense," Hange brusquely replied. "After all, if you think about it, nothing makes sense. Why are the colors of the rainbow in the order they're in? What is fire? Why are the Cursed chosen; why not all people? All are questions that I must confess I have no answers for."

"So where is everyone else?" Annie asked, her voice hoarse from not speaking properly for the last couple hours. Everything from after she left the ball the night before up until then had either been hard on her vocal chords or silence.

"Levi's in here," Hange answered, putting her hand on a thick wooden door standing in front of them. She sharply rapped thrice on the wood. "Oi, Levi, can we come in?"

The teenagers stood stock still, too confused to say anything. Hange said nothing more, either, leaving the four of them in the sound of silence.

A low rumble came from the other side of the door, then a soft growl and heavy paces. " _No_ ," a deep, gravelly voice answered, not sounding too far off from the Levi Annie remembered hearing.

The magician looked sympathetically at the girls. "He's not gonna let us in, so I'll just tell you: Levi reverted to his Cursed state when the unicorn appeared. Perhaps it was because it was in proximity of the Witch, perhaps because he felt he needed to draw on the raw strength of his beast form again, but right now he's undergoing the painful detransformation back into his human form. It's understandable that he wouldn't want to be disturbed."

 _Reverted to his beast form?_ Annie wondered, then glanced at Mikasa, who had become deathly pale. _I wonder how that worked… maybe that's why I slept through everything again?_

"Hange, has this happened before?" Mikasa weakly asked.

"Levi returning to his beast form? Yes, on several occasions, but only when he needed it. He told me it's triggered by some overwhelming protective feeling among other things, including a desire to return to that state of raw power again, but other than that, I don't have much information on his reversion to his Cursed state," Hange honestly answered, leading them away from Levi's room.

Mikasa and Eren exchanged nervous glances. Mikasa bit her lip.

"Don't worry, it's always temporary. Should Eren ever revert to this form after he breaks his Curse, he would change back quite soon," Hange hastily added. "Besides, it only happens once every few years, and never without reason."

"If you insist," Eren mumbled, so messily that Annie could hardly make out the words when combined with how quietly he said it.

But alas, her mind wandered over to other people. "Where's Petra?" she asked. "Where's Armin? Are they okay?"

"Armin's fine; he woke up when the unicorn crashed through the wall. He's probably catching up on sleep in his room."

"And Petra?"

Silence.

" _And Petra?_ "

The silence was only broken by the clacking of heels on the floor.

"Hange, what happened to Petra?"

"Dead."

It was Annie's turn to answer with silence.

Hange sighed and slowed down. "The unicorn caused a panic, people began to stampede, and Petra got caught in the middle of it. Levi only made it worse when he showed up as a beast and _scared_ everyone half to death.

"She was trampled to death," the magician explained, her voice laden with grief. "I know you were more attached to her than me, but I'm all you kids've got now as a helper."

Everyone was struck dumb at the news. Annie wanted to give her condolences, since she figured Hange knew Petra better than anyone else in the castle, save perhaps Levi, but at the same time she knew her words would sound hollow.

"I'll take you to her tree."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> takin' the psat today!! wish me luck, guys!!!  
> this was actually originally intended to be tacked onto the last chapter as a ~*dramatic reveal*~ but i think it's better that it's its own chapter.  
> just one more chapter until you guys are up to date!!


	17. Hazels

Eren's mind was not at ease.

When Hange led the three of them to Levi's room, he had sensed something… wrong about the magic emanating from there. It was explained by Hange soon afterward but that did nothing to relieve his worries. The idea that all this journeying and searching for the Witch to break his spell might all be for nil left him discouraged. His motive and morale to continue were at an all-time low; after all, if he could regress back to _this_ at just the swing of a mood in the future, then what would be the point of changing back at all?

Though Eren admitted to himself that ' _the swing of a mood_ ' was a little extreme, he couldn't help but feel anxious about the future and glanced back at Mikasa, who was walking a little ways behind him. She looked as stoic and composed as ever; however there was a low fire of determination burning behind the mask. The knot of worry in Eren's stomach loosened a little. It comforted him to know that at least Mikasa would always be with him to solve whatever scrapes they got themselves into.

He smiled a little and turned his eyes back in front of him so that he wouldn't knock into anything and sped up from a moderate walk to a rhythmic trot. Up ahead, he could easily hear Hange yammering on and on about _something_ (he really didn't care) to Annie, who looked surprisingly invested in what the other had to say.

It was only when Hange made a sharp turn down a hallway that Eren actually began to pay attention to what she was saying, but not for long.

"Hey, Hange, isn't the staircase that way?" he asked, motioning at the opposite direction with his head.

Hange abruptly turned to him and seemingly stared unblinkingly at him for a split second but her expression soon morphed into one less rigid than the stare and smiled, walking backwards as she did so. "We're not going to the staircase quite yet," she explained, "We're getting Armin first since he's another equally important member of you guys' team. Plus, it's just easier to show you all at the same time." She turned her head sharply back forward and continued walking.

 _Ah_ , Eren thought as he followed, _That makes more sense._ He looked up at the blank, empty walls of that particular hallway. It was hard to see even the stones themselves, for there weren't many torches lighting the way, and those that did were orange and dim, flickering frequently. "Hange," he said aloud, "Why is the castle so much darker than it was yesterday?"

"It's grieving, like the rest of us," Hange solemnly answered. "Magic is so deeply ingrained into every fiber of this domain that even the castle has developed some vague semblance of a consciousness. It too can sense when something is wrong and as such knows that Petra is gone and is grieving."

"What happens when a fairy dies?" Annie quietly asked.

Hange deeply sighed, partially out of frustration, and partially because of her melancholy mood. She turned her gaze up towards the ceiling and slowed her walk nearly to a stop. She closed her eyes, taking a deep lungful of breath and released it slowly, lacing her fingers together and putting them behind her head.

"Some say their spirit flies through the night, fast and true, all the way to the cold, misty depths of the ever-frozen pine forests of the northern mountains, where they transform into sylphs, whispering words into the unwitting traveler's ears. Others say they stay in the general vicinity of where they die for a year and a day before transforming into a will-o-the-wisp. Still others claim they become xanas, flowers, or even brownies.

"I don't know what really happens to them when they die. The only way they can die is if they're killed by an outside force, so their deaths are not all that common. We have no records anywhere of what happens to them once they die. But I think they reincarnate, if not into a human, then into some type of bird of mammalis*. All their memories would change from those of the fae to, for example, that of a sparrow or trout, should they reincarnate into a sparrow or a trout respectively. That's what I believe," Hange explained, her voice notably devoid of all enthusiasm it once held.

Everyone had gathered around her for her explanation and were dead silent; the only sound that remained after she stopped speaking were the sharp crackles and snaps of the torches, and even they seemed muted afterwards. Hange abruptly dropped her hands and began marching forward again with (suspiciously) purposeful strides. The teenagers around her took a step back in surprise and the confidence in Hange's walk faltered. She turned to face them, still several meters behind her and gave them a weak glare.

"Well?" she asked in as a commanding tone as she could muster. "We have to keep going. The world isn't going to wait for you to recover; it's not going to care about the trauma that you went through. And I'm not going to lie to you, wherever you go, whatever you do those days will follow you around forever. Sure, it was in the past, but it happened, it affected you, and there's no changing that. Believe me, I have people I wish I could bring back besides Petra; but sometimes you just have to keep on moving. When I turn around, I'm not going to wait for you again. Let's go get Armin."

Eren nearly remained rooted to his spot again, completely floored by Hange's words, but he blinked and shook the shock away. He took a step and pushed Mikasa forward with his head as he did so, prompting her to begin walking after the magician as well.

The four of them were silent as they walked. No one commented on the soft pitter-patter of fat, salty tears hitting the stone floor.

Hange sharply rapped three times on the wooden door at the top of the tower at the end of the corridor they had just walked down. "Armin!" she sharply said, "Wake up! We're going to do something important."

Sharp, sharp, sharp. It seemed to Eren that everything about the woman was sharp since he and Mikasa had returned from Dauper. Her tone of voice, her clean and concise actions, the expression on her face. He understood that she was dealing with the death of her friend, but a small part of him wondered if she meant to be lashing out at all of them.

" _C-coming,_ " Armin yawned from the other side of the door. The soft padding of his feet approached.

Armin, on the other hand, was soft and full of rounded edges. From his meek and mild-mannered personality to his gentle and benign way with words, the boy seemed much too tame for the fierce and wild ways of the world. Though he notably didn't back down from a fight, the boy seemed much more pacifistic to Eren. He wondered how the boy would fare against fate in the future.

Eren blinked. What was with his sudden analysis of people? He blinked a few times to clear his mind as the door opening in front of him.

Armin rubbed the sleep from his eyes but looked otherwise completely alert and ready to go. "What're we doin'?" he asked, slurring his words a tad.

"I'm going to show you guys something of Petra's that, if used correctly, will help you all on your quest," Hange answered, already walking down the stairs.

Armin brightened and began to follow her. "What is it?" he asked as the other three, one by one, began to follow as well.

"You'll see," Hange answered, not slowing down.

Ahead of Eren, Armin shrugged, then trotted up to Annie and engaged in quiet conversation with her.

Eren, on the other hand, slowed down so that Mikasa could catch up to him at her own rate.

"How are you feeling," she murmured when they fell in step. She didn't look at him, focusing on the path in front of her.

Eren's vision briefly flashed back to a dream he had the night before, blinding him. Pushing the flashback away, he answered, "Fine. Forgot about it in all the excitement of returning back and all that happened while we were gone."

Mikasa nodded and absently reached out to stroke him. "We should still tell Hange about it, though. She's here to help and after all, it wasn't a new dream."

"Yeah, I _know_ ," Eren replied, surprising himself with his irritated tone, but luckily, Mikasa paid it no mind.

"You said there was a freckled girl in it this time, right?" she asked.

"Yeah. She looked a lot like Ilse, just with smaller eyes."

"You don't suppose there's a connection between the two, do you?"

"If there is, then Ilse might have done more for us than just show that the Witch's Curse can be broken."

"Hey, slowpokes! We're down here!" Armin's voice called.

Eren flinched and turned to look behind him, where Hange, Annie, and Armin stood at the bottom of the staircase. A little sheepish, Eren and Mikasa turned around and jogged down the stairs. Hange stopped impatiently tapping her foot and immediately began walking towards, if Eren remembered correctly, the privy. Not wanting to question her, he followed anyway.

Eren's hunch was correct; the four of them were led to the privy. Hange made a beeline for the washbasin, leaving the four of them standing awkwardly in the doorway and unsure of whether to follow or not.

Hange pushed the stone washbasin to the right. There was a loud grating noise, but not just where the washbasin was being moved: before everyone's eyes, a small hole opened up in the wall on the far left wall. Hange continued to push and the hole grew taller and taller until it was big enough for everyone to (if just barely) squeeze through. Hange huffed and heaved once or twice, leaning heavily against the washbasin.

"Usually Petra used her magic so that we could just walk through the wall with the washbasin as a backup, but obviously the backup is our main method now," she tiredly explained, her voice breathy. "Don't remember it being so hard to open. Must be getting rusty. Or I'm getting soft." She paused to calm her breaths.

"Follow me; it's a maze in there," she finally said, standing on her own two feet and squeezing through the crack in the wall. Armin soon followed suit, then Annie and Mikasa. Eren glanced back at the privy for reasons he couldn't quite fathom himself before slipping into the dark.

The second he pulled his tail through into the thankfully more spacious corridor, Hange was already turning a wheel to seal the gap once again.

"You can never be too careful," she explained once everything was pitch black. She snapped and a tiny, orange flame came to life at her fingertips. She blew on it and all the torches lit up one by one.

As everyone allowed their eyes to adjust to the dim lighting, Eren took in his surroundings.

The walls were made of stone, like the rest of the castle (he wasn't too sure what else he was expecting), but unlike much of the castle, the walls were barren of any sort of decoration. It smelled damp and stale; mold and moss lined the cracks between the stones as fine streams of water ran thinly over the slimy things, keeping them alive. Cobwebs were a frequent sight between the walls and ceiling, but hardly any were fresh webs. Spiders and other various creepy-crawlies were nowhere in sight. The hallway extended out a ways in front of Eren with various forks in the road along the way until it turned for good.

Behind him, the light was a pale blue, seemingly coming out from the walls themselves and looking much colder and detached than the warm, flickering, orange torchlight ahead. It looked eerily dead and clean, smelling not of the dank but comfortingly familiar must, but oddly sterile. Yet curiosity tugged at Eren, begging him to go down the path untrodden.

"Eren!" Hange curtly said, causing the wolf to flinch. "We're not going down that way."

The imaginary strings pulling at Eren dissipated as he hesitantly turned away. "Why not?" he asked as they walked down the warmly lit hall.

"It leads to, for a lack of a better word, a different dimension. I know earlier I told you we were in the fairy realm, but that's only partially true; it's more of the gateway realm. Sure, once you enter, it's hard to get out, but you can still return to your regular land of mortals. Down there is _deep_ magical territory; once you enter, you can never go back to a world untouched by magic, otherwise you'd risk ripping the fabric of the universe. In fact, the longer you stay in the intermediary realm, the harder it is to leave.

"Everyone who once lived in this castle, save you four, have been down that hall at one point or another, hence why we live in the intermediary. It's lonely here at times and I don't want that for you guys. I'd prefer if you didn't go down there unless you really had to," Hange explained, her voice beginning to lose its hard edge as she led everyone through the maze that was the secret passageway.

Eren quite lost himself among the twists and turns of the maze; he felt that his sense of direction would forever be skewed once he got out. His toe pads began to grow sore from walking on hard stone for so long. The cuts and sores from his fights with the dragon and boar began to ache and groan in protest, forcing him to tread lightly so as not to bruise them further.

After a long time of silent wandering, they at last came upon a carved wooden door. Hange slid away the barricade and pushed the door open.

At first, Eren was blinded by the sudden brightness and relied on his ears to tell him what was behind the door. There was the gentle swish and burble of water accompanied by the low, raspy croaking of frogs. The occasional high pitched _peep-beep_ of unidentified water birds found their way in, though they were often drowned out by the shrill whoop of a crane. In the background, he could barely hear the gurgling of a spring, adding to what Eren deduced to be a pond.

He blinked a few times and saw he was correct, but instead of seeing a murky pond full of muck and surrounded by marsh, he saw a large, walled room with a crystal clear pond taking up most of it and surrounded by firm land. Tadpoles gathered to have their little secret meetings in various spots hidden by lily pads, scattering whenever a bright green and pink salmon swum too close, its gaping jaws ready to sweep up any stragglers. A stark white crane waded through the water, creating ripples with its every step, yet the silt at the bottom never stirred.

In the deepest, centermost part of the pond, rose a tall, gnarled hazelnut tree. Tiny green hazelnut bundles nestled among the leaves. The tree's boughs were thickly and hopelessly entangled with one another, mirroring how Eren felt about the maze. Drops of condensed dew and mist rolled off the leaves and plinked harmoniously into the water. Larks and other songbirds made nest among the branches, their twittering calls coming together to form a chaotically beautiful song. Fish fry swum in and out of the tree's drowned, tangled roots, hiding among all the little nooks and crannies available.

The water smelled sweet and its alluring scent was only heightened by the various flowers in bloom all throughout the room. Everyone, including Hange, was completely entranced by the effect and ambience of the room, all of them taking a moment to breathe in the serene perfection of the room.

The crane whooped loudly again, jabbing its beak down into the water and pulling out a brown and black mottled fish that Eren could not identify. The clear, clean sound of the otherwise still water being broken was music to everyone's ears; none of them dared disrupt the moment.

But alas, Hange did so herself. She flourished her arm in the direction of the hazelnut tree, catching and directing everyone's attention towards it.

"Make a wish," she said.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> *i used mammalis instead of mammal because the word mammal wasn't invented yet and mammalis is the latin root for the word so why not.  
> i suffered writing this chapter. you wanna know why? because in the scene where eren was drawn to the blue end of the corridor, i couldn't just _leave_ it there, so i had to undo a bit of plot and reweave it again so that it seamlessly blended in with the rest of the story. but it's okay. because that just means more cameos of other characters later on. and because i felt like there weren't enough arcs in the story in general. yeah. i was about halfway done before. i think this might have set me back to about a third of the way through.  
>  but!! i do quite like the sharp development of hange from enthusiastic and bubbly to sharp after the death of petra. i also like all the callbacks to previous chapters. yeah. writing is fun, children.


	18. Purity

_Make a wish?_ Armin wondered, _Sure this place is nice, but could it really grant wishes?_

Everyone else must have been thinking the same thing, for they all stared at Hange, confused. The latter sighed.

"I would have thought that at least one of you would have been able to figure it out just based on the tree, my words, and the context alone, but it looks like I'm going to have to explain everything myself again," she grumbled, dropping her hand back down to her side.

"The tree grants wishes," she curtly said. "It comes from _Cinderella_ –well, no, not really. It's more like _Cinderella_ was made possible by the tree, but that's beside the point–and if you're true and pure of heart, you'll be allowed to cross the pond to the tree and take some of the branches. If you twist them into a crown and make a wish, it shall come true."

"Why don't you use it, then, Hange?" Armin asked.

She smiled at him and walked toward the water's edge. She removed her shoes, stockings, and mourning cloak, placing them carefully down by the shore, but not so close that they would get wet from the gentle waves lapping at the ground. She dipped her foot into the water, and gathering up her skirts to keep them dry, waded until the water reached halfway up her calves. She glanced back at Eren, Mikasa, Armin, and Annie, her gaze soft and melancholy. "My wishes are too selfish," she said as she waded back to shore. "Even if I were able to reach the hazel tree like this, I'd not be able to reach the branches."

Armin couldn't quite bring himself to dare ask Hange what her wishes were, though he figured he knew anyway. "How are we going to know if we're good enough to make a wish?" he asked as Hange replaced her clothes.

"As crazy and a little sacrilegious as it sounds, but those whose wishes are good enough for the hazel tree will be able to walk on the water towards it. It's the only way to get to the tree and still be within reach of its most fragile branches," she answered. "Would any of you care to give it a try? I'm not sure if it'll give you what you need directly, so I _do_ have a backup plan should you choose not to, but perhaps it would help anyway."

Without warning, Eren barrelled towards the water, splashing and scaring away all the wildlife when he crashed into the pond.

He looked back at everyone. "I thought that maybe I could do it, but I guess not."

"You don't have hands anyway. You wouldn't have been able to make a crown from the branches," Mikasa chided, walking out to the shore to help him out.

Hange glanced at Armin and Annie. "You guys want to give it a try?"

Annie immediately backed down. "I wouldn't be able to. I'm not a good person."

"Armin?"

He bit his lip. He never really liked the idea of good and bad people, just that whatever was convenient to the person in question was what labelled them as good or bad to _that specific person_. Since there was no way to be convenient to everyone at once, he had always believed that there was no such thing as a _truly good_ or a _truly bad_ person.

He glanced over at the hazel tree in the center of the pond, then at Eren shaking the water from his pelt and Mikasa shielding herself from the droplets, then over to Annie, before finally settling his gaze back on Hange. "I suppose I could try," he said, but his last few words were cut off by Mikasa's laughter ringing through the room from Eren jumping up in her arms despite his still wet legs.

"Mikasa, do you want to try?" Hange called as the girl in question stumbled backwards from her center of balance suddenly being thrown off.

"Woah!" the latter yelped as she at last completely slipped and fell on her bum. Eren squirmed out of her arms as she looked at Hange and blinked. "Do you think I could make it across?" she asked as she pulled herself into a sitting position.

Hange shrugged. "You never know until you try. You and Armin go."

"I think you could do it, Mika," Eren brightly chimed in.

"O-okay. What do I wish for?" she asked.

Hange shrugged. "Everyone thinks they know what they'd wish for, but when judging whether you're even able to make a wish, the tree also looks at your innermost desire. That is what it grants, not whatever superficial wishes you may have." She turned her attention back to Armin. "You're going to try too, right?"

He nodded, a little unsure of how to feel.

"You should take off your shoes and stockings. Even if you're able to walk on the water to the tree, it's not going to stop getting you wet just because of that."

"R-right." Armin compliantly did as Hange told.

Mikasa daintily stepped onto the water, though Armin couldn't tell if it held her up. She gathered up her skirts so that they would not get wet and took another step forward. Then another, and another. She did not sink.

Armin watched her walk gracefully across the surface of the water, hardly making a single ripple or leaving a tract that she had tread its surface as she did so. Mesmerized, he paused unlacing his boots to watch as the raven-haired girl laughed and danced lightly where she should not have been able to. The fish beneath the pond's glassy surface swam lazily beneath her feet as though there were no difference. Curious to see if he could do it as well, Armin threw off his shoes and socks and gingerly stepped onto the surface of the water.

It appeared to sag beneath his weight, but he didn't sink fully. More confident this time, he took another step forward, then another and another. The water was pleasantly cool beneath his feet and felt velvety soft. It hurt like a stinging slap if he hit it too hard with his foot, but if he was careful, the water cradled and supported his foot so perfectly it was nearly like walking on air. He laughed lightly, his loud but cheerful laughter unsettling a few of the birds in the hazel tree, who twittered angrily at him.

He looked back at Hange. "What makes me and Mikasa so special?" he queried.

The magician simply shrugged.

Knowing he'd get no further answer, Armin turned back towards the tree and began to walk. Mikasa closely followed.

The water was glassy smooth and calm closer towards the shore. Ripples began to shake their footing. At first they came merely from the spring bubbling merrily away in the east part of the pond right between the tree and shore, but soon the tadpoles began to gather beneath their feet. The tadpoles followed their every step, which attracted the pink and green salmon to nip at their heels. Mikasa paid them no mind, but it tickled Armin's soles. He nearly tripped and fell on several occasions.

At one point, the underwater creatures abruptly scattered away and the lone white crane waded over, fluffing out its wings in a distinct act of hostility. Armin glanced back at shore, the first time he had done so, and looked back at Annie. She looked much smaller than he anticipated; then again, the hazel tree was much larger and far away than he had anticipated.

The crane whooped loudly at them, swishing the water with its feet in discontent. It threw Armin off balance, but Mikasa icily stared straight into its pale golden-yellow eyes. Armin took two steps backwards to regain his footing but gazed curiously at the stare-down going on between the maiden and the bird.

The crane ruffled its feathers discontentedly and stretched out its long, white neck and snapped at her. Mikasa blinked in surprise, but gave no ground, instead taking a small step forward.

Armin sidestepped into the crane's range of vision and carefully approached it. It snapped its beak a few times, but otherwise paid him no heed. Realizing it was focused on Mikasa, the blond flashed her a look a gratitude before glancing back to shore for a second time. Annie faintly waved at him as Eren jumped excitedly around on the bank. A little amused, Armin waved back and resumed his walk to the tree, picking up the pace this time so that Mikasa's (possibly unintentional, now that he thought about it) distraction of the crane would not be of waste.

He made his way to the roots of the hazelnut tree, protruding slightly above the surface of the water, and leapt nimbly onto the tallest one. However, even the lowest nearby boughs were still out of his short reach. Annoyed, Armin jumped up to catch the branch directly above him, but fell just short of it. He looked about at what his nearby terrain had to offer; there were a few roots poking out of the water here and there that he could take advantage of, but nothing that he could see that would allow him to simply pull off a few twigs and go.

With a slight sigh, Armin stretched and jumped over to a root closer to the trunk, no longer trusting the water to hold up his weight anymore. From that root, he grabbed onto a thin, low branch that hardly looked like it could hold up his whole weight and pulled himself onto it so that he could transition to another higher, sturdier-looking limb.

The limb dipped and bowed dangerously under his comparatively slight weight. Butterflies flapped about in his stomach, brushing against his chest and making him nervous. No longer brave enough to jump to the next branch, he wrapped an arm around the trunk and reached out for the branch with his other. His fingertips just barely touched it. He bit his tongue to keep himself from swearing aloud and glanced back at Mikasa.

The crane had ceased following her, since she managed to get past it and above waters it deemed too deep, though its beady yellow eyes glared murderously at her. It snapped its beak at her snappishly, but Mikasa seemed perfectly fine with that.

"Are you okay, Armin?" she asked as she walked in his direction. Armin pouted, a little exaggeratedly, he would admit–he looked almost like a small child–and reached for the bough he was trying to climb onto again.

"Just jump," Mikasa told him, but Armin made a dissatisfied noise and shook his head. If he missed, he knew he'd land on the water belly-first and he knew from experience how painful that felt. "I'll catch you if you fall," the raven-haired girl continued, backing up a few steps and holding out her arms so that she could indeed catch him.

Armin hesitated. Mikasa looked at him, half expectantly, half sympathetically, as though she understood that he was scared but still knew he had to take this risk. He looked back at the branch, closed his eyes, and jumped.

"Ai _ya_ ," Mikasa cried as he jumped. Armin assumed it was some foreign curse word, but the thought of it soon slipped his mind when he, by some miracle, caught the branch. He opened his eyes and pulled himself up so that he may sit on it.

"You shouldn't have jumped with your eyes closed," Mikasa chided, her more motherly side showing more distinctly to Armin. "It's hard to belive that you didn't miss the branch completely!" She sighed. "I don't think I'm light enough to follow you, so just toss down some switches and I'll make a crown from them."

"You don't look that heavy."

"I am sixty-eight kilos of pure muscle, Armin. I'm fairly sure that a tree, no matter how magical, couldn't hold me up."

Armin pulled a thin twig off of the base off main branch he was sitting on, stripped it of its bark, and tossed it down to Mikasa, who caught it effortlessly. He stripped the branch he was sitting on of all its offshoots and tossed them all down. When he finished plucking all the twigs off, he slid off the branch backwards, still holding tightly onto it, and when he was hanging on only by his hands, let go, and landed on his feet on top of the water.

"There's only enough for one, but one should be all we need, right?"

Armin nodded, rubbing his raw palms. He watched Mikasa's nimble fingers swiftly weave the thin, white switches together into a simple, white wreath with fascination.

With a kind smile, she dropped it onto his shock of golden hair.

He felt an initial jarring jolt of… something, but after that brief buzz, Armin felt no different. He put a hand up to the crown and gently pulled it off and looked at Mikasa. "I don't think anything happened," he said with embarrassment.

But she was not looking at him. Instead, she pointed up at the tree again, where all the thickest branches diverged. There, in the center of the divergence, was a bright glint of silver and a small, brown lark.

The lark pulled at the silver thing with its beak, tugging it more into Armin's view and revealing it to be a simple hand mirror, and threw it down at him and Mikasa. A little startled, Armin fumbled when catching it, but fortunately saved it before it sank to its doom at the bottom of the lake.

Rubbing his dulling fingerprints away from the mirror's reflective surface with his shirt, Armin realized his feet were no longer fully supported by the water. He was sinking, no longer deemed worthy of being so close to the hazel tree.

So he did the only thing he knew he could do: he made a break for shore.

The crane eyed him wearily as he sprinted by, but the longer the boy remained on the water, the lower he sank and the more water splashed up in his wake. Nor did the crane chase after Mikasa this time, for she had begun to sink as well, and at a faster rate.

Armin could feel himself slowing down; his chest was burning and his legs felt like lead. He could hardly tell where he was going until he felt someone grab his arm to stop him. Blinking, he checked his surroundings again and discovered he was indeed back on dry land, not a quarter of a meter from the walls.

He relaxed and breathed a word of thanks to Annie, who had held him back, since a mere breath was all he could manage at the moment.

Mikasa, on the other hand, had no such person to stop her, and only prevented her own crashing through a wall by bracing herself and hitting it with her shoulder.

There was a sickening pop and a sharp crack when she did so, though the sounds were nearly lost in the loud _thud!_ that Mikasa made when she hit the wall. She slumped to the ground soon afterwards, wheezing.

The still adrenaline-filled Armin pushed the gift mirror into Annie's hands and began pulling the blonde towards Mikasa, full of frightened concern.

Eren gets to her side first, as expected.

"Mikasa!" He crouched down by her face and began licking it. From what Armin could see, there was no blood, but her shoulder was flushed red and her cheeks stained with tears, something Armin hadn't seen on her yet.

"Eren," Mikasa rasped and sat up. More fat tears rolled down her face as she grimaced.

Hange was there next, inspecting the girl's shoulder. "Can you move it at all?" she asked. Mikasa shook her head.

Armin slowed down his approach, but now it was Annie who was pulling him forward to see more of what was wrong. As they crouched down beside her, Armin made note of the purple-blue bruise blossoming outwards from the back of her shoulder where she impacted it at an alarming rate.

Hange clicked her tongue in a reprimanding manner several times. "It's dislocated," she told the raven-haired girl. "I can use magic to alleviate your pain for a short while, but it might still hurt when I twist it back in place, okay?"

Mikasa nodded. "Whatever gets me up and running fastest. I can take it."

"You're going to have a nasty bruise for a while. You probably also broke something, judging by that crack that came with the pop when you crashed."

"I understand."

Hange sighed and put her hand on the epicenter of the bruise, muttering a few words Armin couldn't catch. Then, almost unceremoniously, she twisted and pushed the shoulder back into its socket. Mikasa sharply inhaled and grit her teeth, but overall took the pain as it came.

Armin felt a little nauseous at the sight of it, but it was over before he could look away.

Hange inspected Mikasa's shoulder again, prodding at various parts of her biceps. The girl winced a few times, but said nothing.

"How's your arm feel?"

"Like it's on fire."

Hange sighed and pulled Mikasa up by her good arm. She turned back to Armin and Annie. "Go back to the map tower and wait for us there. If you want, you can mess around with the mirror, but just be aware we might not be there for a little while. Mikasa broke her arm, so I'll have to cast it. You remember how to get back, right?"

 _No_ , Armin thought. "Yes," he said aloud.

"We'll meet you there soon."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> whoo! this totally isn't a week late because i'm an irresponsible bean of a student who forgot about a project and therefore couldn't finish this last week!!!


	19. Broken Dreams

Mikasa walked slowly, gently rubbing her throbbing upper arm as she did so. Her (assumed) fracture area was still radiating excessive heat, but had stiffened a lot since the initial break. She looked semi-balefully at Hange, who, while she looked largely worried, seemed not to think it was a big deal.

They had only left the maze a few minutes ago; Hange kept the three of them in the hidden room for at  _ least _ half an hour fussing over Mikasa’s arm, walking back and forth from the pond and back, freezing the water into little hailstones, dumping them in a little pocket that she’d taken off, and pressing it rather painfully against her arm. Hange had also cut off her shirt sleeve, leaving Mikasa’s bare arm free to feel the cool air breeze against it, since she had also removed her cloak.

Her arm, unfortunately, was not back in its socket. Hange explained that this was because doing so would require too much movement of the bones, but that the moment she could get Mikasa’s arm into a splint or cast, she’d pop the arm back into the socket. Unfortunately, until then, Mikasa’s entire right arm would be immobile.

She looked away from Hange and further down the hall. It was warm and well-lit, but still had a dark, brooding feel to it, quite the contrary to how it appeared. Nervous and fidgety, she took her unharmed hand away from her broken arm, leaving it feeling extra cold and sharp from the sudden lack of warmth, and readjusted her grip on her cloak. She flinched when she absently tried to move her injured arm, causing a fresh wave of pain to jolt up her shoulder and pinch her neck nerves.

“So,” Hange said, “Now that the two of you have returned, I noticed you were whispering about a dream one of you had while you were away. Would either of you mind talking about it, or do you just want to jump straight into a potential solution?”

Mikasa glanced at Eren. It was his nightmare, as was normal, so she felt as though she had no say in whether or not they would talk to Hange about it.

Eren stopped walking and nervously kneaded his paws, not unlike a cat. “It wasn’t really much of a  _ nightmare _ , if that needs clarification. Just a really long, kind of disturbing dream.

“The details aren’t very clear anymore, but…” he squeezed his eyes shut, trying to remember.

“What I remember most was a tower. And two girls. One was short and blonde with long, long golden hair that shone like the sun; she lived at the top of a tower in a glade. I didn’t see much of her until the end, and even then, it was just a brief glimpse before I woke up.

“The other was a knight, though her armor was dull and rusted, as though she had been wandering around for a long, long time. She held a broken bridle in her hands, but there was no horse in sight. She must have been foreign-born, though, because she had strange yellow-gold eyes. But they were fishes’ eyes, dim and lifeless. Her skin was dark and covered in freckles; her expression seemed permanently melancholy.

“I found the knight while wandering about near an unfamiliar town. She seemed to be murmuring something over and over, from what I could lipread, but I could hear nothing and she didn’t notice me when I walked up to her. I followed her for a long time because there wasn’t anyone else around, really. At the end of it all, we pushed through a thicket and into a glade, in the center of which was a tall, tall tower that seemed to reach the sky, with thick rose brambles all around the base.

“The small, blonde girl came out after a while and poked her head out of the window, but that’s when I woke up. I forgot what woke me up, but it was something.” Eren blinked a few times, appearing uncharacteristically sober, then stood up again.

Mikasa glanced over at Hange. The former wasn’t as fazed as the latter since she’d heard this dream before, both earlier in the day, and before they had even met their companions. The only difference now were the girls he saw in it.

Hange thoughtfully tapped her chin. “That sounds like it could be a lot of different things, to be honest. A knight riding out to save a princess, regardless that this time the knight is a girl, isn’t anything new and will probably be a cliché until the end of time.” She began walking again, and Mikasa realized that they still needed to fix her arm.

“We didn’t get time the other day to talk exactly about your last dream, but I did spend some time thinking about it. Well, not about your dream itself, since you never told me what  _ happened _ in the dream, but just the concept of your recurring nightmares as a whole. Might I ask how often either of you had nightmares?”

“Often enough,” Eren vaguely replied. Hange turned around and began walking backwards just so that she could glare at him. Eren sighed and rolled his eyes. “Maybe two or three times a week,” he grumbled.

“I had them, too, about once every three weeks. So, never as often as Eren, but I’ve had my fair share over the years,” Mikasa added, surprising even Eren with her honesty.

“You  _ still _ got them after we turned fourteen??” His eyes were as wide as saucers with hints of betrayal. “You told me they stopped!”

“I never needed to worry you. Besides, they don’t scare me anymore. I know they’re not real.”

Hange sighed, loudly and with exasperation. “Mikasa, would you consider your nightmares an important statistic or no? Because if no, we’re dropping this conversation  _ right now _ .”

Mikasa yearned to stretch her arms to help clear her ringing mind, but grit her teeth and forced herself not to. She thought about her dreams; most of them were just of her turning into a bird and flying away. They had nowhere near the same amount of depth as Eren had on a regular basis. “No, I don’t think they are,” she reluctantly said.

“Good.” Hange pushed open a door and ushered her two followers in. 

It was rather dim, lit only by a window whose curtains were closed, not to mention dusty and full of cobwebs, but the room was clearly an infirmary. Jars of dark green, brown, and grey dried leaves were piled up on tables all around the room, a plain cotton cot and a chamber pot next to it sat off to the side, and orange-rusted knives sat coated with dust along a counter.

Hange scurried over to the window and threw open the curtains, throwing up heaps of dust and knocking over a jar of grey leaves, which disintegrated the moment the glass around them was shattered. 

“Whoops,” Hange mumbled, kicking the glass away and opening up a drawer. Mikasa watched from the doorway as the former pulled out a rolled-up strip of white cloth and two short, thick sticks, which Hange hardily smacked against the wall to make sure that they were sturdy enough. 

Hange glanced over at Mikasa as she briskly walked over to the cot and patted it. “Sit  _ down _ .”

“Sure,” Eren joked, running over, jumping up and settling on the bed. Hange glared at him, and with a cheeky grin, he jumped back down and sat on the floor. Hange rolled her eyes.

Mikasa gingerly walked into the room and, carefully dodging the glass shards that littered the floor, sat down carefully, so as not to move her stiff and still aching arm.

“This is going to hurt a little, okay?” Hange warned, putting her hand on Mikasa’s shoulder.

“Oka–” the raven-haired girl began, but her words were suddenly cut off; her face contorted in pain. Hange had slapped her arm, right where the fracture had been. She could feel warm, fat tears streaming unwillingly down her face as her head throbbed and  _ throbbed _ and  _ screeched _ in pain. She refused to scream, however, she refused to–

_ Scream _ .

She could hardly hear it herself, was barely aware of it, but she could feel it. She could feel her vocal chords vibrating themselves raw, sounding louder and more shrill than she ever could have  _ dreamed _ of going. She saw white flash beneath her eyelids, which had closed on her own. Was she curled up? She couldn’t tell for herself.

Eventually, her overwhelmed senses quieted down, and while stars were still dancing in front of her eyes, she wearily looked around the room and instinctively took inventory of her surroundings.

Her broken arm was stabilized and resting on her lap, but now in a perfect, permanent, right angle. The white bandage and splints were hard as stone, probably due to Hange’s magic. Her face was still warm, her cheeks still puffy and wet with salty tears, her arm still painfully throbbing, but all those things were fading, albeit slowly. 

Eren was crouching at her feet, his paws pinned over his ears. She felt instantly guilty for letting him stay in the room while she got her arm set. She should have realized, she should have realized…

A warm hand patted her gently on the head. Looking up, Mikasa saw that Hange was smiling regretfully down at her.

“I hoped that if I caught you off guard, the surprise slap would surprise you more,” she explained. “I was never very good with life magic, in practice, anyway. It’ll be a week or two before we can take the cast off, if the physical therapy and your Curse work together well enough, but you can still go out.” Hange quickly patted Mikasa’s cast and cued her to get off the cot.

Mikasa obediently slid off the cot and crouched down next to Eren. Habitually, she reached out to stroke him with her right arm, but when it moved no further than quarter of a meter, reluctantly switched to her left.  _ The next week is going to be tough without my right hand _ , she regretfully thought as she prompted Eren to get up.

The wolf blinked slowly, carefully removing his paws from his ears. He cringed, probably at the still very fresh memory of her screaming. “I’m glad you’re okay,” he simply said and trotted after Hange.

“So, as I was saying earlier, this recurring nightmare thing is probably really important, but in an impeding kind of way, if that makes sense. So, I’ve realized that, until the witch can no longer track you via whatever Mare or Alp she’s got nestled on Eren, you’ll not be able to go anywhere. If that makes sense. You know, I don’t think any of this is making sense, just trust me.

“But anyway, getting back on topic. I happen to know a pretty crafty warlock that can brew us up a potion that’ll chase away things of these sort. Unfortunately, not forever, but hopefully it’ll last long enough for you to get your main job done,” Hange rambled as she led them quickly through the halls back towards the map room.

Mikasa stood up a little straighter and put a little more spring into her step. “Really? What’s their name?”

“Marco Bodt,” Hange briskly said as she turned into the narrow tower staircase and began sprinting up. “He’s nineteen now, I think, but I’ve known him since before Master Levi was cursed. His specialty has always been potions, so don’t be worried; we can definitely trust him.”

She opened up the door at the top of the staircase and walked into the chamber on top.

“Hange!” Mikasa heard Armin yell, a tinge of panic to his voice. “We were messing around with the mirror and the map, and, and, and I’m not sure what we did but–” Armin paused to take a deep breath before hyperventilating.

“Armin.  _ Armin _ . Calm down,” Hange commanded as Mikasa and Eren squeezed into the tiny map room. “Just let us see the mirror.”

Mikasa squeezed in next to Hange and looked over her shoulder. Reflected in the mirror was a girl. Her eyes were a dull yellow, her skin dark and freckled, her long, dark hair dirty and tousled, and her armor dull and rusted.

“Hey, I think that might be the girl in Eren’s dream,” she said aloud.

Nearby, Armin seemed to have calmed down enough so that he was no longer hyperventilating. Annie was quiet, preferring to hide behind the other blond.

Hange squinted at the mirror. She removed her glasses and squinted some more. Then abruptly, she pushed them back on and put the mirror onto the table, near the map. “Good job, Armin. Annie. You helped us a lot today.” She closed her eyes and cast a spell on the map. The blinking maroon dots suddenly multiplied and changed their colors to various pastel shades. She pointed at one pale, blue dot nestled in a valley, surrounded by shallow mountains.

“Mirror, mirror, on the table. Yeah, yeah, we all know this fable. I cannot rhyme, so bear with me, and show me who this dot would be,” she commanded the mirror.

Mikasa leaned over the map and watched in awe as the freckled girl in Eren’s dream faded away and was replaced by a similar looking boy with dark skin and freckles, smiling and crouching as he petted a cat.

Hange smiled vaguely, but she still looked proud of herself. “I know what you kids need to do.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> hello guys i am Suffering™. winter's my unproductive time, when i lose all my motivation and stuff, and since i have school, i can't promise that i'll be able to update every week anymore. plus i feel like everything i've been making is total garbage AHAHAHAHA.   
> would y'all believe me if i said we were about halfway there, assuming my idiot brain doesn't decide to add any more arcs? because wow, this is a lot longer than my original idea. which was just fairy tale retellings with the snk characters. and idk maybe i'll still do that, just later. aiuhaiufhadfihald  
> anyway, i hope y'all are enjoying the fic so far!! feel free to subscribe or comment, if that's what you're into!! and as always, have a greaaat daaaay!!!!!!


	20. Map II

Annie peeked shyly over Armin’s shoulder at the mirror on the table, then at the map pinned to the wall. She couldn’t comprehend what the boy shown in the mirror, who was probably living in the far-off mountains, would have to do with anything with what they were doing.

Armin must have been thinking the exact same thing, because he looked at Hange and said, “I don’t understand. What does he have to offer us?”

Hange briefly summed up what she, Eren, and Mikasa had talked about while Armin and Annie were waiting for them in the map tower.

“So we need to get him to make us a potion so that the Witch can no longer track us?” Armin asked, just for confirmation.

Hange nodded. “But, I get the feeling that right now, the girl in the mirror will have a lot of importance as well. Recurring dreams are messy business in divination, and when they reflect a real life the dreamer wasn’t aware of, it gets even messier.” Hange walked around the table and kicked away the books still on the floor from when she realized Mikasa was a  _ Mulan _ parallel. “Tell me which dot you guys were focused on when you were messing around with the mirror.”

Annie stared at the map, but with so many more spots and colors on the map, she found it hard to focus and find  _ the one _ that they had accidentally been focused on, because truth be told, they weren’t. Activating the mirror had been a complete accident on Armin’s part when he started reciting joke poetry.

Hange softened. “Do you want me to revert it to the way it was?”

Armin and Annie nodded. Hange turned back to the map, closed her eyes, held out a hand, and mumbled a few words. Many of the blips faded away, and those that remained returned back to their maroon coloration. 

Armin climbed over the table to join Hange as Annie pushed some books off a chair and sat down next to Eren, who poked his tongue out at her like a child. She ignored him.

Armin pretended to study the map, probably struggling to find a likely candidate based on the information Hange had given them about Eren’s dream, but drawing a blank. Annie’s mind as well was unfortunately empty as well, but didn’t want to admit they had only found the girl by accident.

_ There are no accidents in magic, _ a small voice whispered in the back of her head.  _ There are no accidents in fate. Finding this girl was no accident; your silly jokes will define the aftermath of your journey. _

_ Shut it, _ she snarled at herself, then shook her head to clear away the buzz that made up her thoughts. She glanced over at Hange, who seemed patient as ever (though Annie’s mind imagined her growing tempestuous inside), then over at the map with fresh eyes. With her own mind no longer distracting her, her sharp eyes spotted a thin, needle-like tower turret peeking out of a forest canopy. Oddly enough, there was no maroon spot on the map marking someone as there.

_ That must be the tower with the girl, _ she thought, though she knew she was taking a risk with this train of thought. But the lack of a dot; what could that mean…? Perhaps the map only showed those who were parallels, and this girl had something new to her that made her not show up. After all, there were many fairy tales involving girls locked in a tower far, far away, herself included. There was really no end to how many new variations that could be produced.  _ But then again, I could be wrong... _

She forced herself to ignore those doubts and continue this train of logic.  _ If that’s the tower with the girl in it, but her knight was found near a town, then that must mean that it’s far away from  _ this _ particular castle, but not in the direction of  _ my _ castle, because that’s where  _ we _ came from, and Eren said it was unfamiliar. _ Annie’s eyes silently darted around the map, searching for something that would tell her her own location. She wasn’t sure what; perhaps some pretty font reading “ _ You are Here _ ,” or something. 

She almost laughed aloud at herself, but kept herself stoic and composed. If she laughed, the others would ask about it, and if she told them, they’d find out that she and Armin actually had no idea what they were doing, and then Hange would get mad. Or forgive them, but Annie could never be sure with Hange.

_ Castle _ : Annie spotted it. Dead trees surrounded the castle to the south-east of the needle tower, and even further east beyond the living trees was a castle lying in ruins. Her own castle. 

A dark red spot pulsed slowly to the west-northwest of their location. A little to the east of it was a small, static cluster of houses that made up a town named Lasanin.

“That one,” Annie said, pointing to the dot on the map, speaking for the first time since Hange, Eren, and Mikasa had joined them, and surprising Armin. She got up from the chair and tiptoe leaned over the table to touch the dot on the map. “It was that one,” she said, with a slight bit more confidence this time, then pointed to the needle tower. “And if we apply what we know, then that must be the tower she led Eren to in his dream.”

Hange looked curiously at the spot on the map as Annie fell back onto her heels, standing properly again. 

“There’s nothing there, and it’s a little far away,” Hange reluctantly said. Annie bit her tongue to calm her nerves.

Armin stepped back and sat on the table to let Hange step back and observe the map as a whole. Annie leaned forward and used his head as an armrest. 

“But, at the same time…” Hange trailed off, leaving everyone in the tower sitting or standing stock still where they were. The suspense was so thick, Annie wanted to get a knife and cut it all away.

“Mirror, mirror on the table,” Hange mumbled, pulling the mirror towards her as she sat on a small, lopsided pile of books on the table and stared intensely at the dot as she finished reciting the rhyme. As she did so, everyone else found their gaze drawn down at the mirror, whose face changed from blank silver (Annie assumed it returned back to its default after a few minutes) back to the dirty, rugged, knight girl.

Annie looked from the mirror, to Hange, to the maroon dot on the map, then back to the mirror. She slowly, quietly, let out a sigh of relief. Her logic had been sound.

Hange broke her trance, turning around at her torso and waving a hand in front of the map to return it to normal. She looked at the four teenagers very seriously. “If real life plays out the way your dream did, Eren, then I’m going to have to say that you and Mikasa are going to have to prioritize the knight and her tower princess. But, we’re still going to need that warding potion in order to make any significant progress.

“So the plan is obvious: since you two have to follow your dream, literally, that leaves Armin and Annie to go the the mountain together to fetch the potion. Are you guys okay with that?” 

_ To the mountains, to the cold _ . The idea filled Annie with both chills of fear and excitement. A part of her wanted to say no, she was afraid she would change back into the Snow Queen, but at the same time, what else would she do?

The other three shook their heads one at a time. Hange scooted backwards on the table and pulled up her other leg, allowing her to turn to fully face everyone else. She looked at Annie expectantly. “Annie?” she patiently asked.

Annie swallowed silently. “No.”

Hange subtly lifted an eyebrow, but for a whole split second didn’t react otherwise. She slid off the table and looked at the map again, then out one of the windows, whispering things to herself that Annie couldn’t catch.

“It looks about noon,” she murmured. “Would you prefer to head out now, or tomorrow morning?”

“Now,” Eren said, startling Annie, who had forgotten about him, with how loud he was. “You did say that the knight was likely important, and I’m not sure how long this window of opportunity will last. From what we can see from her location on the map, she’s probably exactly where she was in my dream. And, you said that recurring dreams were messy in divination, so I guess that my dreams predict the future, and if that’s true then we might not get this window of opportunity for a while again.”

“Eren, we literally have a map that can show us where both the tower  _ and _ the knight are,” Armin pointed out. “We could find the knight and the tower any time we wanted to.”

Eren deflated slightly. “ _ But _ her current position could still mean something,” he argued.

“Eren’s right,” Mikasa added, “And, I think it would just be better to leave sooner. We don’t know how long we have until Eren’s Curse becomes permanent, if it hasn’t already or, heaven forbid, already has. Knowing the system we have now and the unpredictability of the Witch, this kind of chase could last years. And as paranoid as it might seen, every second counts.”

“I’d prefer to leave now, too,” Annie found herself saying. 

“Three to one, Armin. You’re outnumbered,” Hange said.

Armin defensively put his hands in the air. “I never said I was against leaving now! I was just pointing out the flaws in Eren’s logic! I’d probably say now’s a good choice too because there’s really nothing to do until we go, anyway.” 

Hange laughed, and a brief flash of her former excited, mirthful self shone through. She carefully stepped over a few books still strewn around on the floor and walked to the door. “All of you need some stuff before I’ll let you go, but by the time I’m done, you should still have a number of hours to quest. Don’t worry. I’ve got this.”

~***~

The thick, fur boots felt heavy on Annie’s feet as she and Armin slowly walked towards the mountain to the north, changing her normally light and delicate steps to become loud and clumsy stomps. She adjusted the leather satchel, worn soft with age, so that the strap rested more comfortably on her shoulder. Neither her nor Armin’s bag held an awful lot; Hange had learned from Eren and Mikasa’s experience going to Dauper that most people didn’t need as much as books said they did. 

Annie found herself wondering how right those books were when her stomach growled.  _ Perhaps _ , she ruefully thought,  _ Hange had been basing her estimates off the wrong people. Eren and Mikasa, after all, are very self-sufficient and Mikasa eats like a bird. _

She stuck a hand into one of the pockets in her satchel, pulled out a crumbly chunk of flatbread, and popped it messily into her mouth, chewing it into a sweet mush before finally swallowing it. She sighed, not wanting to leech off her rations more than she had to. 

She and Armin had been travelling in silence for well over an hour now. Not that Annie minded, of course, but it felt to her like it gave their journey a grievous, melancholy air.

Travelling by foot was terribly slow; no matter how long they walked, Annie couldn’t tell how much closer they were to the mountain and it frustrated her. She sighed, but said nothing.

_ Clip, clop, clip, clop _ . Annie stiffened at the sound of a horse’s hoof steps. She picked up her pace ever so slightly and hissed at Armin to do the same.

“Uh, I’m kinda sorry about this, but, uh, your names wouldn’t happen to be Armin and Annie, would they?” It was a deep, gravelly, and unfamiliar voice, sounding tentative when asking. Annie instinctively tensed up and walked even faster, but Armin caught her by the arm and turned the both of them around. 

A few meters back, half hidden by a tree trunk, stood a tall centaur with dirty blond hair which grew all down his neck and became light peach fuzz on his bare back before thickening again and becoming part of his palomino horse half. His arms were crossed and he flicked his tail lazily about, but his narrow, hazel eyes showed worry.

Annie gently pulled her arm away from Armin’s gentle grasp.

“’Cause I’m real sorry if I got the wrong people,” the centaur nervously continued. Annie narrowed her eyes suspiciously at him.

“No, this is they,” Armin honestly told the pale horse-man. “Did you need us for something.”

“The name’s Jean,” the centaur told them as he cautiously walked towards them. “I owe a black-haired Miss a favor for… er…  _ catcalling _ her, for lack of a better word.” Jean hung his head slightly in shame. “She and her wolf called on me to help you get to those mountains quickly and safely.”

“And how would you do that?” Armin asked.

“I’m half  _ horse _ . How do you  _ think _ ?”

“Point taken.”

The three stared at each other for a full minute.

Jean eventually sighed in defeat. Armin cracked a smile and vaulted himself onto the centaur’s bare back. Jean flinched and sidestepped to compensate for the sudden weight lurching on his back, but soon stabilized himself. 

Annie took the hand offered to her and was pulled onto the horse’s back as well. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> because i'm not creative enough to come up with a chapter title other than map ii.  
> also. _IT IS LE **~*RETURN OF JEAN*~**_. it only took... like... thirteen chapters. idk. i'm too lazy to check.  
>  i can't wait to make a bunch of lack-of-hand jokes with jean. wait. he does have hands. darn. did i mention that my favorite joke in this story so far is just the whole "eren doesn't have hands" gag? man. i meant to put that in the last author's note, but meh. as  
> this chapter is the product of a productive friday holiday. for the most part. some of it is from sunday too. heh maybe i should've started on chapter 21 instead procrastinating, buuuuttttttt ehhhhhhhhhhh... lazy. i can't believe i'm not more creative than to come up with a name other than map ii. anyway, long note aside, thanks for reading/commenting/subscribing/kudoing and all that great stuff. i appreciate you all so much for your words (or not, i don't mind lurkers either). anyway, leave your thoughts in the comments, if that's what you're into, and as always, have a greaaaat daaaaayyyy~~~~


	21. Knight

“Are you sure it was a good idea to let that Jean guy track down Armin and Annie? I mean, really, how much can you trust a centaur?”

“Eren, for the last time, he seemed like a pretty okay entity. He apologized when we first met, he came when I called, apologized  _ again _ , and left without complaining. Which is what you are  _ not _ doing right now.”

“But he’s not human!”

“And so, technically speaking, are  _ you _ .”

Eren snarled and began to walk more heavily. “I  _ hate _ it when you use that argument. And you know just as well as I do that I  _ am _ still human.”

Mikasa stopped and crouched down to Eren’s level. “Yes, you  _ are _ human, considering your history, intelligence, and situation. But, objectively speaking, you are still a wolf, if only on the outside. We don’t know about Jean’s history or situation, but judging from his intellect and empathy, I think we can safely assume that he’s at least close to human.”

Eren stared balefully into Mikasa’s unwavering grey eyes, then huffed a short gust of wind in her face and broke her gaze before scampering ahead.

“Hey!” Mikasa objected, blinking furiously as she scrambled to her feet. “You can’t just hate Jean for no good reason forever, you know!”

“Yes, I can! He’s an arrogant bastard!”

“ _ We’ve talked to him for a collective of ten minutes. _ ”

“So what?”

Eren could hear Mikasa’s exasperated sigh and felt a twinge of guilt for frustrating her this badly. They usually got along just  _ swell _ , but there were still times when they got on each others’ nerves. Still, he had to give her kudos for putting up with his childish antics for this long. Sometimes, he felt like he would have kicked himself out to live alone in the woods if he were dealing with himself.

The thought of that made him slow down so that Mikasa could catch up with him just by walking. “I’m sorry,” he mumbled, staring at his feet because he didn’t want to look at her.

She said nothing in return, but he could still tell she had already forgiven him. She always did, no matter what.

When Eren finally looked up again, it was significantly darker out than it had been. Night was falling. “Hey,” he said. “Let’s stop for the night.”

“Are you tired? I can keep going; I can carry you.”

Eren shook his head. “No, you need to rest.”

“I’m fine.”

“You have a  _ broken arm _ . And, it’s dark.  _ And _ , you never sleep enough anyway.”

Mikasa sighed. “All right.”

~***~

The brown-coated wolf sat vigilantly by the last few dying embers of their fire. They had stumbled across a small cave where they could stay the night. It was full of moss and probably had its fair share of creepy-crawlies hidden in the crevices, but was calm and otherwise empty. 

Eren stared up at the ceiling, where a sliver of moonlight slipped into the room through a crack. It wasn’t much, since the moon was simply a fat crescent hanging in the sky, but he could still see well with his improved night vision.

Something outside crashed into a bush, and, with a groan, fell down with a loud  _ clang! _ Eren stiffened, but didn’t leave the fireside.

Whatever had crashed groaned again, louder this time. Mikasa stirred in her sleep, but did not wake.

_ Screeeeeech _ . Whatever was outside was likely covered in rusted metal and getting up, as it creaked and screeched and groaned. Eren wrinkled his nose slightly and began to consciously sniff at the air, but couldn’t sense anything different than usual. Other than Mikasa, all he could smell was damp moss, the morning dew, and dirt. 

_ Clank. Kssh. Crack. _ It seemed as though they were getting up, however slowly, and the sounds likely came from metal hitting more metal. Particularly more a rounded plate metal, since the sound was fuller, leaving only one possible explanation as to what it was.

_ The blind knight had stumbled upon them _ .

Eren curled his toes and changed from sitting to a crouch. He pricked his ears and took a few stealthy steps forward, tiptoeing swiftly around the fire and toward the crevice that was the entrance to their shelter. An ember popped in the makeshift fireplace, causing the wolf to flinch, but not for long enough that he broke his stride. 

He squeezed halfway through the crack, then allowed his eyes to adjust from dim lighting to even dimmer. He glanced in the direction where he remembered the sound coming from, and saw the faint silhouette of a tall, armored girl without a helmet, kneeling in the brush and head tilted mournfully up at the sky. 

Eren pulled himself the rest of the way out of the cave, then trotted almost soundlessly around the knight, observing her. 

From all perspectives, had he not known the Blind Knight was a girl from his dream, he never in a thousand years would have guessed that she was a girl, though perhaps that stemmed from the genderless armor she wore. The only thing that looked even remotely feminine were the long, dirty strands of ponytailed hair that were half tucked into the girl’s padding, spilling out in a snarly mess in the process, and half plastered all over the dull, rusted armor itself with mud. And even then, Eren guessed that if she hadn’t been blind, the knight would have kept it clipped short anyway.

He approached the Blind Knight from the back, despite the fact that she was, well,  _ blind _ and couldn’t see him no matter what. He sniffed her matted hair lightly, but she reacted instantly, sweeping a hand harshly out behind her, just barely missing the tips of his ears. Eren jumped back, teeth bared and ready to attack if she did. 

“Who’s there,” the Blind Knight whispered, her voice, hoarse with assumed disuse, the second thing that gave away her gender. She tensed, then swept a bit of her long, unkempt hair out of her face as she shifted into a position that would allow her to run the second she had to. “I know there’s someone there; I felt you, and my senses don’t lie to me.” Her voice was louder, but hoarser, than the first time she had spoken.

“Relax,” Eren hissed. “And pipe down, will you? I have someone important to me sleeping in the cave and besides, I understand what you’re going through.” As he spoke, Eren trotted around the Blind Knight so that he stood in front of her and caught the tail end of her hostile expression falling away.

“You’re blind, too?” she whispered, hand paused midway to her face, almost as if she were going to touch her eyes.

He shook his head, then remembered she couldn’t see. “No, but I have also been changed by magic, and I’m also looking for someone.”

The Blind Knight reached out her hand and Eren compliantly stepped forward so that she could feel him. But she almost immediately pulled away and her expression twisted into one of suspicion. “What’s your name?” she asked.

“Eren Jaeger.”

The knight folded her arms across her chest and began to laugh a coarse, doglike laugh. It rang clearly through the cold, midnight air; some of the nearby nesting birds awoke and fluttered their feathers in distress. It quite surprised the wolf, causing him to step back, though luckily, it didn’t last long. 

“Quite trusting aren’t you,” she said teasingly, reaching her hand out and flicking the air just in front of his forehead, a motion that was probably intended to hit him.

Eren decided not to respond to that. “And your name is…?”

“Ymir,” she said, her voice reverting to a raspy whisper.

“No surname?”

“Don’t remember.”

“You don’t remember your own  _ surname _ ?”

“Nope.”

Eren sat down as a breeze blew through the trees, rustling the leaves softly. “So, what happened to you?”

“Are we exchanging tragic backstories now?”

“Yeah, I guess.”

Ymir pulled her knees up to her chest and hugged them best she could. “I fell into a rosebush.”

“I beg your pardon?”

“I climbed a tower, some jerk face stole my helmet and pushed me out the window of a tower with a beautiful girl in it. There was a rosebush at the bottom, and I went blind when I fell in it.”

“I drank out of a pool and passed out, and when I woke up, I was halfway to being a wolf.”

A pause.

“Sounds kinda stupid when you sum it up so shortly like that, doesn’t it,” Ymir snorted.

Eren smiled. “Yeah, it does.” He laughed. “My fiancée is sleeping in the cave in front of you. She’s a Cursed, too, but in a cool way. Hange says she’s from  _ Mulan _ , and that that makes her really strong and stuff.”

“Hold on, I’ve been wandering around blind for the last year; can you explain this cursed thing, who Hange is, and what Mulan is?”

“Wow, I can’t believe you got along blind for an entire year,” he commented, then quickly caught Ymir up on all he and Mikasa had learned in the past few days. “And I’m not  _ nearly _ as knowledgeable on fairy tales as Hange is, but you sound like you’re from  _ Rapunzel _ . You know, girl with long, blonde hair–”

“‘ _ Rapunzel, Rapunzel, let down your golden hair, _ ’” Ymir recited, rolling her eyes. “Yes, I know the gist of the story. My only question is  _ why _ .”

“Dunno,” Eren answered. “And finding out isn’t particularly high on my list of things to do. What’s at the top is killing the Witch who cursed me like this.”

“Well, there’s this weird blond dude who visits Christa’s tower every few days to check up on her. I’m pretty sure he’s no witch, but from what Christa has told me, he seems like a pretty skilled warlock. Maybe there’s some correlation…?”

“Who’s Christa?”

Ymir’s face broke into a sappy grin. “She’s the beautiful, blonde angel who lives in a tower far, far away. I’m gonna marry her when I find her again.”

“Aren’t  _ you _ a g–” Eren began.

“So what?” Ymir snapped. “There’s nothing in the way of love.”

“It’s  _ weird _ . And how do you know she loves you back?”

Eren ducked as the blind girl suddenly lifted her hands to box his ears, resulting in a rather loud clap ringing through his head afterwards. She scowled, obviously displeased that she missed, but unable to do anything about it. 

“ _ You’re _ weird, you little twat; you’re a human in wolf’s clothing. No one sees you as  _ really _ human except for maybe for that  _ fiancée _ you mentioned earlier. Which reminds me, what’s a girl doing engaged to be wed to  _ you _ , anyways? You’re an  _ animal _ .”

Eren growled softly, his neck fur bristling with annoyance. In all honesty, he had no answer to Ymir’s question. Mikasa was perfectly capable of living just find on her own, leaving him to grow into feral lone wolf in the woods, getting married to someone else, and overall acting like he had never existed. Yet she chose to stay with him. 

“What was that? Speak up, doggie.”

“I don’t know.”

“You don’t  _ know _ ?”

“I don’t know.”

There was another long silence that was less awkward than it was tense.

“So what’s with this Christa girl? Why’s she so important to  _ you _ ?” Eren asked, finally breaking the silence.

The sappy grin returned. “She was the first person in a long time to treat me like a real person. Just because I’m all dressed up like a knight don’t mean I am one.”

_ A slave _ , he realized.  _ So that’s why she looks so foreign; she’s literally not from here. _ Then, he deflated a little inside.  _ That must mean she’s not connected to Ilse after all. Rats. _

“She hasn’t seen me in over a year.” Ymir’s grin faltered. “I wonder if she still cares about me.” She turned her head up towards the stars, though she couldn’t see them, Eren could tell she missed them dearly. “After all, I still care about her.”

Eren softened, then stood up and stretched his muscles, gone stiff from the cold. He walked over to Ymir’s side and began pushing her in the direction of the cave entrance. “C’mon,” he said kindly, “Let’s get you safe and warm. We’re going to go find Christa tomorrow.”

The knight thrust her arms out in front of her so that she may feel her way around. “We are?” she asked, her tone hopeful.

“Yup. We are,” Eren answered, pushing her into the cave wall so that she could find the entrance herself. His mind wandered back to what she had told him earlier, about the warlock, most likely the shapeshifting Witch anyway, visiting Christa every few days or so. Perhaps, if they were so lucky…

“And you’ll live happily ever after,” he continued.  _ Even if it’s the last thing I do _ .

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> whoo whassup guys. another week, another chapter, amirite? heh. good thing i'm on break, otherwise i'd be in bed right now instead of finishing this up. it's quite a dialogue-heavy chapter. mikasa's not much of a talker, but i quite enjoyed writing ymir for the first time in literal _months_. i like her crappy sense of humor. i never realized how much i liked writing her, actually. ah, such a shame i don't more often. it was also nice to have a bit of a spat between eren and mikasa in the beginning. i actually find it kind of hard to write long-term arguments between the two because mikasa would just try to talk it out. i mean, eren's a stubborn little shit, but like. yeah. //this is why they're a pre-established relationship in the fic.  
>  anyway, thanks for reading!


	22. Buck Off

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> usually i'm like. too lazy to do these, but there's some good jean/armin/annie bonding. and a lot of horse puns. dear god, the horse puns.

Armin woke up with a familiar ache in his legs and an unfamiliar warmth and weight on his back. He rubbed the sleep from his eyes as his lethargic brain tried to process what was going on.

_ Clip, clop, clip, clop _ . Four steady hoofbeats, one after the other, hardly registered in his mind, but what little they did he found very annoying and wished for it to stop.

A snort from up ahead. “About time you woke up. Sheesh, it’s nearly dawn already.”

Armin began to sit up, then stopped when he felt the warm body of Annie sliding off as he did so and realized if he moved, she would fall. So he leaned forward once more, scooting up on the centaur’s back once he felt she was safe.

“Petting me against the way my fur grows is really uncomfortable, so, uh, I’d prefer if you didn’t move like that again,” Jean awkwardly said as Armin rested his chin on the former’s shoulder. “And, uh, you’re kinda blocking my field of vision on that side with all your hair.”

“Sorry,” Armin mumbled as he sat up properly. Well, as properly as he could; there was still the nagging fear in the back of his mind that Annie would fall off during a particularly jostling bounce while unconscious. Though, now that he thought about it, Jean had to be the smoothest horse he’d ridden in a long while, if not ever, and he mentioned it.

The centaur laughed, but it wasn’t a belly laugh: it was a fragile, breathy laugh to keep his riders safe. “Thank you,” he said, “My mother was a palfrey*, so I grew up walking like her. Didn’t know I was special until I was a teen.”

“Just your mother?” Armin asked.

“No idea about my dad. Mum never talked about him and by the time I had enough contact with other centaurs to realize I was really  _ that _ different, I was a little too embarrassed to ask. I think he’s dead, though; probably killed by a hunter.”

“Is that why you’re less rude than what the stories say centaurs are like?”

“Watch it, nerd, or I’ll buck you and your lady up, you neigh-sayers.”

“Was that a pun I heard?” Armin smirked.

Jean swat his tail at Armin with annoyance, who laughed. However, he stopped when they both heard Annie groan in the back and mutter something incoherent.

“We just picked a whole bouquet of  _ oopsie daisies _ , didn’t we, Armin,” Jean joked under his breath, making Armin bite back a snicker. 

“’M not anyone’s lady,” Annie sleepily declared as she lethargically sat up straight and yawned. “I’m an independent  _ adventurer _ .” She thumped Armin startlingly hard on the back, temporarily knocking the wind out of him. 

He felt Jean hold back laughter, actual  _ laughter _ unlike his dainty snorts, in front of him and elbowed the centaur in the small of his back. 

“That’s it, off you go,” the latter grunted as he stopped, reared, then bucked his two riders roughly onto the ground, one on top of the other. He turned around and loomed over them, arms crossed and expression smug.

“Ass–”

Armin sneezed, censoring the rest of Annie’s word. With a sniff, he eyed Jean wearily.  _ He _ certainly seemed to have warmed up to them, compared to the soft and shy creature he had been when they met just hours ago. 

“Are you two sufficiently awake so that neither of you will harass each other into harassing me, or do I need to buck you again for it to work?” he crisply asked, though it seemed less of that and more of a dare to even  _ try _ going against him and his unfortunate advantage over them as their noble steed (with a mind of his own).

Annie sat up and got off of Armin’s stomach, glaring daggers at Jean all the while. 

Armin followed suit, though instead of glaring, he gingerly rubbed where he hit his head on the ground and stared at the grass, trying to clear the stars spinning before his eyes. He barely heard it when the girl next to him began to curse madly at the centaur, but when he finally became aware of it, he hurriedly clamped his hand over her mouth to cut her off and chided her for her foul language. Annie licked his hand, causing Armin to pull away in disgust, and began to swear avidly at him instead.

“ _ Anyway _ , if you two are ready to continue,” Jean calmly said after a few minutes of them bickering, “Then I suggest we do. The mountain isn’t going to get any closer on its own, you know.”

“Shouldn’t you be getting tired right about now?” Armin suspiciously asked. The question had frankly been on his mind since they had met the previous afternoon; the centaur had obviously been walking all night and most likely much of the previous day. He was bound to be getting sleepy soon. 

Jean wiggled his eyebrows and waved his arms about. “ _ Witchcraft _ ,” he said, providing no  _ real _ explanation at all.

Annie rolled her eyes and stood up. “Okay, horsie, let’s keep going,” she replied, followed by a pitiful attempt to pull herself up onto his back.

Jean stamped one of his back hooves dangerously close to her toes, snorting loudly, and Armin could tell if he were a total horse, he’d have his ears pinned back. Annie jumped back and engaged in a brief staring contest with the centaur, which ended only because Armin pulled himself halfway onto Jean’s back, startling him.

“You two are going to be the death of me, I  _ swear _ ,” he darkly muttered as he folded his legs beneath him to let Annie on, “If I didn’t have this conscience of mine, you guys’d be miles and miles back.”

Armin lightly, lazily kicked Jean in the sides. “That reminds me, why  _ are _ you like this? So much more… what’s the word?  _ Human _ than the rest of your species? I have to say, from what I’ve read, you are most definitely the exception of them.”

“Honestly? Who knows. My mom scolded me a lot when I was a kid, and even more when I got into that classic ‘ _ rebellious idiot _ ’ phase. Add in that isolation factor– which I’ve mentioned  _ three times _ , by the way– and I guess you could chalk it down to a mix of upbringing and a lack of exposure to common culture.”

Armin shaded his face from the painfully bright early morning light shining almost directly in his right eye. “How much longer until we get there, Jean?” he asked.

Jean pawed at the ground for a second. “Hang tight and we’ll see!” he cried, giving his riders a few short seconds to brace themselves before breaking into a sudden canter.

~***~

Armin never liked “ _ riding like the wind, _ ” as it was called, when he first learned to ride a horse, and he didn’t like it now, riding a centaur. The freezing morning air numbed his nose and his cheeks, reddened and stiffened his fingers so that they felt like they were permanently entwined with Jean’s coarse mane. Granted, the rest of him, thank goodness, was at a more reasonable temperature thanks to Hange providing them with thick winter clothes for the mountain, but,  _ still _ …! 

“Jean,” he said through gritted teeth, “I can’t feel my face.”

“Neither can I!” he whooped in reply, speeding up temporarily before switching to a fast trot. “Ahh… don’t you love a brisk run in the morning? Wind in your hair, feelings of freedom– it’s all so great, isn’t it?”

“I’m going to cut off my hand if the blood doesn’t start circulating in it soon,” Annie growled from the back, stiffly flexing her fingers in a vain attempt to warm them again.

“Put some gloves on,” Jean argued.

“Such a shame you’re still alive then; your fur is the ideal softness for my gloves. But, of course, all that can end in an instant, can’t it,” she dryly said in return.

Jean slowed down to an easy trot. “Had it not been for the laws of this land, I would have slaughtered you.”

“With what, your hooves?” 

“Watch your snark, little lady, or I might just buck you off.”

“I  _ dare _ you to  _ try _ .” Armin felt her loose grip around his waist tighten and he hoped that his frozen fingers could hold the both of them on this horse, otherwise they were both in for a real bad and bruised time in a couple hours.

“Whoop, well,” Jean began. 

He bucked once, giving his riders a good jostle; twice, Armin could feel his grip pulling out a few loose mane hairs as Annie’s arms became uncomfortably tight; thrice, Armin decided he never needed kids in the first place, so what was  _ so _ bad about landing on  _ that _ spot.

Fortunately, the bucking stopped after three times. “Not so hard to shake after you’re awake, I suppose.”

“Please tell me we’re almost there…” Armin groaned.

“How fast am I allowed to go before we start arguing again?”

“I dunno… a trot, maybe?”

Jean paused, allowing Armin to orient himself in space again. He peered over Jean’s shoulder and saw the uphill walk finally start to slope downwards. A little speck of a cottage rendered nearly invisible by its surrounding trees was just barely in sight at the end of a thin, overgrown, dirt road. “That’s probably it,” he said. “That’s where we’re headed.”

“Nooo,” Jean replied, voice laced with obvious sarcasm and probably rolling his eyes. “That’s just an abandoned house where no one lives and we’ve made the whole trip for nothing.”

“Thank you for your  _ oh-so-important _ contributions, Jean,” Armin snapped right back at him.

“Are we going to keep going?” Annie asked, sounding quite bored.

“Yes, yes,” the centaur answered with annoyance, and sure enough, began plodding forward on the trail. They went much faster downhill than they had slowly walking up the gentle upwards slope and Armin found it necessary to cling to Jean just to stay stable.

The trees whizzed by; he wasn’t sure if they’d be able to stop in time if they suddenly stumbled upon a cliff while running.

Fortunately, that didn’t happen, and before Armin knew it, they were in the heart of the valley, where the little, scrubby, dirt path began. Jean slowed down significantly as he carefully trod the seemingly abandoned path.

“It looks completely untouched,” Annie whispered as she and Armin gazed about the glade. “Are you absolutely sure this is the place? The road looks like it hasn’t been used in  _ years _ .”

“I’m not sure why it wouldn’t be,” he answered equally softly. It was so peaceful; the only sounds that could be heard was the crunch of frosty grass beneath their ride’s hooves, the clear, chirping melody of some songbird, and their own breath. “It’s in the mountain valley, after all. And the path implies that someone was here at least a couple months ago. What could have possibly happened in such a short time frame to an assumed peaceful potion brewer in  _ these _ remote parts?”

“Who knows,” Jean answered at his regular volume, frightening a few little birds with the abrupt sound. “Some weird stuff’s happened over the last couple  _ days _ . It may not have happened directly to me, but I felt it in the atmosphere. Something big is going to happen. And if all this has happened in just a few days, who knows what could have happened over the course of a couple weeks?  _ Months _ , even?”

“Who knows,” Armin sighed, looking up towards the bright blue sky and the enormous, fluffy, white and grey clouds lazily floating in it for several minutes, watching the treetops move by. “I haven’t been living in this realm for as long as you two, so I can’t tell if anything is going on.” He looked back down and saw that the trail looked much more well maintained. “Oh, thank goodness, we must be getting closer. It’s starting to look like someone lives here.”

“Duck your heads,” Jean warned as he pushed through a thicket of evergreen trees. 

Their sharp needle leaves pricked at Armin’s face for an uncomfortably long time, but it was worth it when he was finally able to safely open his eyes again.

They were at the edge of a little hollow, with a frozen, crackling creek running through at the bottom, with a warm log cabin letting out smoke from a chimney nearby.

“That can’t be safe,” Annie muttered as she and Armin slid off of Jean’s back. “But then again, he probably knows magic.”

The three carefully crossed the glen and stood in silence at the door.

Slowly, Armin raised his fist to knock.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> there were too many horse puns in this. "buck off" is a pun, even, on "fuck off". and i didn't realize cutting annie off after "ass" was a pun, too, until just now. cuz you know, donkeys. asses. heheheh.  
> there were too many puns in this and i love it.  
> thanks for reading!!! sorry it took so long to update. finals and stuff. (~TwT)~  
> might go on another short hiatus. but don't worry, i'm not abandoning it. i have the rest of it planned out. there's... 13... more... chapters... *dies*  
> AND an epilogue.  
> ...basically at _least_ three more months of this. maybe i'll be able to compress chapters. i doubt it though, the story is kind of dependent on the narrators. *~*  
>  thanks again for reading!!!!


	23. Fly Free

Ymir wasn’t exactly Mikasa’s  _ ideal _ company for travel: she constantly made crude jokes, was shamelessly loud, and needed to be guided  _ everywhere _ . Well, that last part wasn’t exactly her fault, but it still made Mikasa struggle to keep her temper whenever she tripped and needed catching.

They began staggering, for lack of a better word, through the forest, in the general direction of the needlepoint tower they’d seen in Hange’s mirror, first thing after she’d woken up at the crack of dawn, with Ymir wearing her patience thin the whole time.

Eren, on the other hand, was getting along just fine with the freckled knight, making use of his equally crass humor and while Mikasa’s dislike of the character grew more and more blatant, the wolf and knight were bouncing off one another like a pig’s bladder on a stone wall.

She stared at the town of Lasanin for a little longer than she intended when they passed it by at a distance. Her annoyance grew when Ymir knocked her bony elbow into the small of her back and grinned at her. 

“Ya gotta keep moving, Missy,” she said. “Besides, that town’s full of idiots. Believe me, they’re not kind to people who are different.”

Mikasa pushed away thoughts of just leaving Ymir in Lasanin until they could return with this Christa girl to break the spell outside of the tower, knowing it wouldn’t work anyway.

The forest they walked through was serene, seeming almost fragile in nature because of how naturally peaceful it was. The early morning breeze nipped at Mikasa’s fingers and cheeks, making them gradually turn bright red. She readjusted her cloak on her shoulders and hugged her stomach to conserve heat. It was strange; she clearly remembered being able to withstand even the bitter winters’ snow without a whole lot of trouble. Why would a chilly winter wind bother her now?

She decided it didn’t matter.

She stopped leading Ymir, for remarkably, she began to know the way on her own, to the point where their roles were reversed and the blind girl led the two adventurers to a clearing in the woods, though it could hardly be called that, since every spare inch of land was covered in thorny, blood red rosebushes. 

The straight, sharp, sloping sides of the needlepoint tower was only disrupted by the small room at the top. A disturbing silence filled the air, seemingly stifling all life but that of the roses, which flourished in the eerie atmosphere, the blooms’ sickeningly sweet scent intoxicating the two human girls and nearly driving the wolf mad.

“It’s a mess of rosebushes, isn’t it,” Ymir said in a low voice, snapping Mikasa out of a trance after a few moments. “I can smell ‘em, crazy as ever.” She audibly sniffed the air again then wrinkled her nose. “They’ve gotten stronger. Disgusting little plants.”

Eren whined loudly nearby.

“What is it, Eren?” Ymir snapped, putting a hand to her hip, where her rusted, sheathed sword hung. Mikasa tensed; surely she wouldn’t  _ decapitate _ Eren for the mere reason of being incidentally annoying? And the two had been getting along perfectly fine until just a few seconds ago.

“The smell’s giving me a headache,” the wolf cried, covering his nose with his front paws. “It’s too strong.”

“I’m sorry. There’s not much we can do about it,” Mikasa replied, crouching down next to her fiancé and gently stroking his head. However, Ymir snorted nearby.

“‘Course there’s something we can do about it,” she said as she drew her incredibly rusty sword and swung it dangerously in front of her, lopping off a chunk of the rosebush in front of her. The branch fizzled away before it even hit the ground. “We’ll just hack them all away; problem solved. Easy peasy, pumpkin squeezy.” 

“What’s a pumpkin?” Eren asked, but Ymir wasn’t listening. She took a step forward and swept her sword in front of her again, though instead of cutting through the flowers, broke the branches with the flat end of the blade and narrowly missed Mikasa’s fingers.

“You’re blind,” the raven-haired girl pointed out, grabbing Ymir’s arm before she could blindly swing her blade again and prying it out of her hand. “You’re going to hurt someone doing that, so let me do it.”

Ymir crossed her arms, her orange-red armor screeching in protest, and harrumphed. “Not my fault,” she loudly grumbled. “I can’t even see where you’re going! How am I supposed to know where the rosebushes are!!”

Mikasa gave the freckled girl a solid flick to the forehead. “You have functional ears, don’t you?” she dryly asked. “You’ve survived on your own, completely blind, for a year; I’m sure you’ll manage following one silly girl through a straight path of roses just fine.”

Ymir heavily exhaled through her nose, as if letting off literal steam, muttering curses. Mikasa hacked down the rosebush in front of her with a smirk; she knew Ymir had no good comebacks. “ _ And _ , what’s a pumpkin??” she added, when she remembered the strange phrase the foreign girl said just a minute ago.

Ymir grumpily shrugged and explained nothing.

Eren got up rather reluctantly and padded after the girls. “Still makes me feel sick,” he mumbled, then sneezed.

“Are we there yet?” Ymir asked after about a minute, though it sounded suspiciously like she was whining.

Mikasa wiped a light sweat off her brow and glanced at the tower. They were perhaps a third of the way there, so she said so.

“Pah, close enough,” she muttered, then threw her blind gaze up at the tower. “Christa, dear Christa, let down your long-ass hair, so that we may climb it like a stair.”

“What  _ was _ that,” Eren whispered.

“It has to rhyme or something; I don’t know why,” Ymir hissed in reply. “Don’t question it. Poetry is hard, so that was the best I could come up with at the time.”

“What would you have come up with if you were going to make a new one?”

“I don’t  _ know _ !”

Mikasa hacked away another bush and looked up at the tower’s turret, and lo and behold, in the lone window, a golden haired angel, white wings and all, skittered into view. Her previously lifeless blue eyes lit up and her face split into a grin when she looked down and saw the three travellers, pulling herself up onto the edge and waving excitedly at them.

“Does she talk at all?” Mikasa asked when she noticed the angel’s mouth moving, but no sound coming out of it.

“Nope,” Ymir replied. “At least, not that I’ve heard. I can’t read and write, either, so Christa’s just been the pet name I’ve given her. Why, is she waving at us?”

“Yup,” Eren answered.

Ymir scowled. “Well then don’t be  _ rude _ ! Wave back!” she chided as she waved in Christa’s general direction.

Mikasa had to hold back a snort of disbelief as she curly waved back to the girl in the tower before continuing to hack a path through the roses to her.  _ Don’t be rude. She should watch herself and tell me that again _ .

Christa began to unplait her hair, taking great care to sort out the snarls as they came without breaking a single strand. As she did so, she let her hair hang over the edge, letting it drop lower and lower, transforming her thick, heavy plait into a makeshift rope for them to climb up. All this she did silently, never uttering a single peep.

They reached the base of the tower when the hair was about halfway down. Ymir groped the wall in front of them, searching for it.

“It’s now down yet,” Mikasa flatly told her. “So stop panicking.”

“Uhh…” Eren trailed off, staring at the sleek pile of hair in front of him. “What am I supposed to do with this? I don’t have hands. I miss ‘em, but alas, I don’t have ‘em.”

Mikasa chewed the inside of her cheek. Indeed, none of them had thought of this, though to be fair, getting up the tower via hair wasn’t something she would have thought was going to happen. “Ymir, is this the  _ only _ way to get up the tower? You’re sure there’s no hidden door somewhere or whatever, right?”

“Unfortunately, yes,” she replied, already walking up the side of the tower. Up above, Christa hardly budged from all the weighty tugging at her scalp, remaining perfectly still as Ymir climbed. Mikasa had to admit, she was very impressed that such a tiny, fragile looking girl would support all that weight and tugging with just her hair, though, when she had what looked like two dozen kilograms of it constantly weighing down on her head.

“I can–”

“No, you shouldn’t,” Eren cut her off, giving her a deadpan look in the meanwhile. “You’re going to fall and die. I’d prefer if you wouldn’t risk it.”

“I didn’t say anything.”

“Oh, so you  _ weren’t _ going to hold me in one arm and pull your way up with the other? Then by all means, continue.”

Mikasa’s only response was a glare that she could hardly even keep because he was so spot-on. It was a saucy remark, but nonetheless true.

“Look, I’ll just wait h–”

“No.” It was Mikasa’s turn to interrupt now. “I might need you.”

“ _ You _ ? Need  _ me _ ? Mika, you kick ass just fine on your own.”

“What happened to ‘ _ I won’t leave you _ ’?”

“You were in immediate danger then. We’re both safe at the moment.”

“ _ At the moment _ .”

“ _ You have a broken arm _ .”

“Yo,” Ymir called down from the top. “She needs to bring in her hair, but you guys can just hold onto it and she’ll bring you two up with it; she’s strong enough.”

Mikasa crouched down and opened her arms for Eren to leap into. “See? You can come with me. I’m strong enough to just hold onto her hair with you. You’re not awful heavy anyway. Besides, you can lean on the cast now; it doesn’t hurt anymore.”

Eren rolled his eyes but jumped into her arms anyway, and slowly but surely, Christa pulled them and her hair back into the tower.

The instant everyone was safe inside the tower, Christa immediately smoothed out the several knots that had formed in her otherwise impeccable blonde hair and began to plait it again. She flashed a bright smile at Eren and Mikasa as Ymir, struck uncharacteristically dumb, staggered over to the tiny angel, and hugged her tightly.

The cheery smile faltered, then the eternally happy eyes they had been seeing on the angel softened, then gave way to tears as well as she momentarily forgot her hair and returned Ymir’s hug. 

“Aww,” Eren sighed, always strangely the sucker for mushy romantic reunions.

“Shut it, furball.”

“But you just ruined the moment!! Your  _ own _ moment!!!”

Ymir loosened her grip on the little angel. “Yeah, well f–”

Christa punched Ymir’s armored shoulder so that the loud clang that resulted drowned out the string of swear words that followed.

“Unnecessary censorship, Christa!!  _ Let me say f _ –”

_ Clang!!! _ Christa gave Ymir a pointed glare the second time around.

“If she has wings, why doesn’t she just fly away?” Mikasa asked, speaking for the first time in a while. 

Ymir tugged fondly at a lock of the angel’s long, blonde hair. “Too heavy for her size. Plus, her wings get clipped annually, though it doesn’t look too bad this year. Maybe if we cut all this hair off, she’d be able to.” She grinned and pulled out her rusted sword again. “Heck, why don’t we?”

“You’re  _ blind _ .” Mikasa stepped forward and grabbed Ymir’s arm, prying the weapon from her. “And you’re going to  _ hurt _ someone with that, so  _ stop wielding it _ . Honestly, I can’t  _ believe _ how much you want to use this thing.”

Ymir crossed her arms. “My eyes are getting better! See, Fluff-face is to your… er…” She looked down at her hands and swept a strand of hair carefully out of her face. “Riiight.” She dragged out the word, as though unsure of the difference between right and left.

“Well, she’s not left,” Eren commented and everyone looked down at him.

“Never make a pun again,” Ymir said, deadpan. “I’m serious; that was awful.”

“Aww, ma–”

He was cut off by a very near, very loud crash of thunder. Instinctively, Mikasa checked the one window, and while the clouds didn’t look too bad, a cold and furious wind stormed in, roared around the room before becoming a single form, that of a man, who glared directly at Ymir.

“ _ You again _ ,” he boomed, his voice like deafening thunder. 

“Yeah, it’s me,” Ymir challenged, putting a brave face on despite the fact that her voice cracked. “So what?”

The wind man– Witch– Warlock–  _ whatever _ – sneered. “ _ So? You should have  _ died _. My angel isn’t for some scrappy  _ peasant _ like you. It’s not in either of your destinies _ ,” he spat.

“Yeah, well, I write my  _ own _ destiny, sucker.” She stood up and took a bold step forward. “Not you, not some ridiculous god, only  _ me _ .”

The Witch’s form faltered, temporarily dispersing into wind again. He eyed Ymir wearily. “ _ I should toss you into the roses again _ ,” he muttered, then turned to face Eren and Mikasa.

Mikasa felt the hairs on the back of her neck stand on edge and she adjusted her grip on Ymir’s rusted sword, now even more glad that she took it.

“ _ You two, too? We _ –”

Before he could finish, Eren leapt across the room and tackled the man, though he passed right through. After all, he  _ was _ currently made of thin air.

He scowled, remaining translucent as a reminder to everyone that they could not physically harm him while in this form, and wearily glanced from Eren, to Mikasa, and back to Eren again. Mikasa readied herself for a counterattack.

He gently floated down to the ground and gradually became more and more opaque. For a second, nobody budged, when all of a sudden, Eren lunged for the Witch a second time.

Without even looking, the Witch caught him roughly by the scruff of his neck, causing him to yelp. “ _ Protecting the girl, huh, _ ” he asked in a low voice, then tossed the wolf to the back of the room. 

He set his sights squarely on Mikasa, who tensed. She knew she couldn’t take him on, not like this. After all, it was a mere two days ago when they had last challenged each other and she had lost. But it made her feel better, just to be ready to defend herself. 

“ _ Well if I can give a curse, I certainly can take it away as well _ .”

And in that moment, all of Mikasa’s impeccable control fell away, and she charged at the Witch with a spirited yell, surprising almost everyone in the room, including herself, with her impulsivity. The Witch dodged her easily, but instead of recovering almost immediately, she tripped and landed jarringly on her casted elbow. The sharp jolt sent throbbing pain through her arm and she struggled to get up.

“ _ Mikasa _ !” she vaguely heard Eren yell, his claws scrabbling on the stone floor as he ran back to the fight.

“ _ How very disappointing, _ ” the Witch sighed, and waved his hand.

She blacked out.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> "why's the chapter called 'fly free' if no one f'king flies?"  
> well you see, my children,,,, it's a reference,,,,,,,,,, to an itty-bitty fandom that i'm just too lazy to see if it has a fandom. there's a partner chapter to this. it's the last one. and this chapter title will probably make sense next mikasa chapter~ or i might cut out the next couple mikasa chapters for like. surprise and stuff. but most likely not. you guys will find out in three chapters or so.  
> but like, just for you guys' information, the partner chapter is called "with me". "fly free with me." make sense? no? well it will.   
> also... guys...... this has nothing to do with the fic..... but if y'all are into seasonal anime... you should watch flip flappers. it's really good. and well written. and like aw man the opening is just brilliant. the main subtext-story-thing is about a girl discovering how gay she is. the first episode is like an acid trip, i hear (idk i thought it was pretty fun), but it's gOOD. i promise. you guys should watch it. the fandom is super tiny _i wrote 30% of the fic for the fandom that's how smol it is_. it good. such a shame there's the gay skaters this season to outshine it. anyway. that was a psa. watch flip flappers. ciao~


	24. Potions

Marco, as it had turned out, was a perfectly normal human being, albeit a somewhat lonely one at times. He insisted he was perfectly okay with it, however, saying that the valley he lived in was perfect for him; the mountains surrounding it kept robbers out, the valley itself provided him with all he needed, both to survive and the climate was excellent for growing the ingredients in his most frequently made potions.

“Besides,” he told the three of them, “It also keeps out people with frivolous requests on top of robberies. I feel bad whenever I have to turn someone down, so it spares me that.”

Annie looked up at him from her seat by the hearth, where she and Armin were warming their chilly fingers and faces. Jean was inside Marco’s cabin as well, sitting contentedly at a little table with his forelegs tucked in, and his hands were fiddling with the leaves of some of the indoor plants.

“You’re so… friendly, Marco,” she commented, still quite confused by his very warm welcome after Armin knocked on his front door. “We’re just two strangers and an unknown centaur.”

“Hey!” Jean indignantly interrupted (what for, Annie had no idea. After all, she was right in that he was unknown), putting his hands on his hips as though getting ready for a sass battle. However, Annie ignored him and continued talking.

“Why would you just let us into your home? For all you know, we could have lied to you about our connections and be waiting for the right moment to strike with some super-elaborate plans to destroy you or something.”

Marco shrugged as he took one of his plants away from Jean– dill, if she remembered her schooling from over a century ago correctly– tugged off a few thin, fragile leaves, and gently put the pot back in front of Jean. “Trust is always something I’ve given very freely throughout my life. If there’s no reason not to trust someone, then why not?”

“But you also have no reason  _ to _ trust them! Sure, we’ve done nothing to betray that trust, but we’ve also done nothing to gain it.”

“Annie,” Armin cut in, “Why are you being so insistent on this? He’s already let us in, and you’re almost never this chatty.”

“I’ve never been this  _ confused _ , that’s why,” she argued.

Marco laughed as he ground up a few holly berries in with the dill leaves. “Well, if it makes you feel any better, I have a pepper brew for self-defense along with some Veritasium. I could splash the pepper brew in your eyes and make you blind, or slip some Veritasium into some tea for you three and force you all to spill not only all your ‘plans,’ but also your deepest, darkest, most well-kept secrets with just a simple questions.”

Both boys’ faces instantly flushed a deep red and Annie felt heat rising up to her own cheeks as well. Marco laughed and turned away again.

“Looks like you’ve all got quite the bagged cats~” he teased. “But it’s okay, if you do spill, your secrets are always safe with me.” He winked then turned back around, casually flipping a thin, yellowed page in his recipe book. “Rats, I forgot the mermaid’s fin. Could one or two of you go out back for me and get it?”

“I’ll go!” Jean instantly piped up, rising and trotting out the back door without a second glance.

“Wait– aw, man, he’s out of earshot already. Armin, could you go with him and tell him it’s in the cellar, not the shed and that I need the side fins, not the dorsal? It’s the–”

“Long, thin, rectangular one instead of the fat, triangular one,” Armin finished for him. “I was quite well educated, Marco; I was living a prince’s life up until about three days ago.” With that, he followed the centaur out and closed the door behind him.

Annie suddenly felt very nervous being alone with this strange man and backed away so that her back was to the wall. She eyed him wearily.

“It’s okay, Annie, I don’t swing that way; you don’t have to be afraid of being violated.”

She cocked her head in confusion, for she had never heard that phrase before.

“You don’t trust me, do you?” Marco asked, but not in a hurt or accusing manner. Instead, his voice was kind and understanding. He picked up a little vial of clear liquid and uncorked it. “Veritasium,” he explained, holding it out to her. She shrank back, afraid. “It’s okay, that was just in case you wanted to smell it, since it’s otherwise indistinguishable from water.” He sniffed it delicately, then wrinkled his nose. “Ugh, smells like rotten murdock,” he commented before downing the vial’s contents in one gulp.

Annie watched him, still suspicious as he raised his right hand and slipped the vial into a pocket in his coat lining. 

“I solemnly swear on this right hand of mine that I, Marco Isaac Bodt, have just downed a bottle of truth serum and mean the young Miss Annie in front of me no harm whatsoever.” He gave her a friendly smile and lowered his hand. “See? You’re fine here with me. Otherwise the fairies will come out and hack off my hand lickety-split.”

Annie eased up a little. At the very least, he had given him his middle name; she could use that against him if push came to shove. She eyed him wearily as he removed his cauldron from the fireplace, replaced it with a teakettle, added a few brittle, dried tea leaves to both the kettle and the cauldron, and began to slowly stir the potion. After about a minute of this, he removed his stirring spoon from the viscous, brown, bubbling mess, shook off the excess potion back into the cauldron, and left the spoon at a chord with the rim. He took another glance at the teakettle and then sat down next to Annie.

“I get the feeling the two of them are going to be gone for a while– after all, it probably isn’t easy to get a centaur of Jean’s size down the stairs– so if you wanna chat, we have time.”

Annie looked at the ground. “I’m sorry, but I don’t have anything to talk about. I don’t lead a super-interesting life.”

“I’ll take your word for it, then; even though I’m  _ sure _ there’s  _ something _ to tell, I won’t push you. You guys said Ms. Hange and her Master Levi sent you?”

“Just Hange, really.”

“Ah, got it. I trust they’re both doing well, then?”

“Well, I’m not really one to tell whether they’re doing okay or not. I hardly know either of them, but Levi recently turned back into a beast. Temporarily, of course. I’m sure he’s back to normal by now, but, yeah. That’s about all I know.”

“What brought the three of you here, then, if not out of loyalty to them?”

“Well, really just Armin and I; Jean’s just our–” She suddenly stopped herself. Why was she chatting with this man so casually?

“Ride?” Marco supplied, gently bringing her out of her paranoid thoughts.

She peered at him curiously. Something about him just seemed so trustworthy, she decided. Perhaps it was how friendly he was, perhaps it had been the Veritasium vow he had taken in front of her a few minutes ago. Either way, Annie felt she could trust him. Not with everything, but with the basics.

“Yeah,” she said. “You could call him that. It was actually some… friends of ours whom he owed a favor who sent him over to help speed us up on our journey. Time is of the essence oftentimes in these situations.”

“‘ _ In these situations _ ’?” he prompted.

“We’ve all been cursed in one way or another by this witch, except for Armin, he’s pretty normal,” Annie explained. “Our friends (she was still rather hesitant to call them that; she barely knew them) are sort of distorted reflections of the fairy tale  _ Little Red Riding Hood _ , with the boy being transformed into a wolf and the girl always wearing a red cloak. Of course, they’ve been engaged since before they became Cursed, from what Armin told me, but, yeah. Hange told us that their own household used to mirror that of  _ Beauty and the Beast _ .”

Marco nodded. “You mentioned Master Levi had reverted back to beast form just a minute ago. I remember when it was his more or less permanent state. He was quite the frightening beast.”

“Mhm. I was asleep for about a century, then when I woke up, my heart was turning to ice. Armin saved me both times.”

“Wow. He mean a lot to you?”

She went quiet. She hadn’t been feeling very strongly about  _ anything _ as of late; it kind of gave her a niggling fear of becoming the Snow Queen again. She remembered advocating so strongly to stay with him, Eren, and Mikasa the day she woke up, but that was just about the last time she felt so strongly about anything. Actually, now that she thought about it, even the things before Armin had kissed her awake all seemed like but a dream within a dream.

Marco must have gone and gotten the kettle off the fire while she was thinking, because the next thing she noticed was the calming sound of tea being poured and the delicious scent of tea wafting through the air. He cocked his head at her, offering a teacup and saucer with one hand and resting his other on the kettle’s handle. Annie politely took the cup, let him pour her some tea, and peered at him over the rim as she took a delicate sip.

She swished the drink around on her tongue for a second to get a better taste before swallowing. She looked inside the tea-stained white cup and saw a few fragments of dried tea leaf swirling around in the otherwise clear, golden-brown liquid. She took another sip, noting its slightly bitter, distinctly undiluted herbal taste. It was quite unlike the tea she remembered having at Levi’s castle, which had been creamy and a little bit sweet. This tea calmed her down, grounding her to reality, and she was grateful.

“You’ve been through more than you let on, haven’t you?”

Annie nearly choked on her tea.  _ Damn, how did he figure that much out already? _ she thought as she harshly swallowed.

Marco gave her an alarmed and concerned look. “Are you okay? ?”

Annie quietly thumped her chest to help the tea pass. “I’m fine; I just don’t like talking about my past before I woke up.”

“I’m sorry; I didn’t mean to pry.” He paused and the cabin was silent except for the crackles and snaps of the fireplace and the low, intermittent pops of the thick bubbles that surfaced in the cauldron. “You know, if you want some Veritasium or Fortitudo, I can give you some. You never know if you’ll come across an old enemy and need something useful.”

“Fortitudo…?”

“It’s a category of strength potions. Some, like Fortimentalis, strengthen your willpower, as the  _ mentalis _ part of the name implies. Others, like a well-made Forticorporis, strengthen your body. You become immensely powerful and become nearly an unstoppable force. There’s also a very tricky balance recipe, but I don’t think I’m good enough to make that. And, of courses, I can make you three a speed potion, so that Jean can bring you back to Ms. Hange faster.”

Annie was dumbfounded by his sudden generosity. “What’s the catch?”

“That you destroy any past demons still plaguing you without guilt or remorse whenever you may encounter them.”

“Is that  _ really _ all?”

“I’m  _ not _ going to ask for your firstborn child. Babies don’t like me. Small children do, but not babies.”

Annie thought about the offer for a solid minute. “I’ll take the the Fortitudo.”

Marco began to stand up. “I’ll go find it in my storage. What kind?”

“Surprise me.”

After she had been given the potion and slipped it into her bag, she and Marco sat in silence. Neither one of them started up any new conversation, but that was perfectly okay with Annie. The ambient sounds of the cabin were enough for her.

Eventually, the back door opened up, letting in a cold breeze that freshened up the stuffy cabin atmosphere, along with the prince and the centaur, both of which were covered in dust and cobwebs, and both held a single, paper-thin, extremely fragile, long, dark green mermaid fin. Armin smiled sheepishly as he handed the freckled potion master the fin. 

“Sorry we too so lo– o– o–” Armin sneezed, his slight jump shaking off a small cloud of dust and causing everyone in the room to hack for a few seconds. He sniffled. “Long. It was kind of dark in there, and Jean had a lot of trouble with the stairs, but we got your fins! Sorry if we accidentally ruined the potion.”

“Nonsense! This isn’t a time-sensitive potion, thank goodness,” Marco answered as he took the fins from Jean and Armin and put them inside a little bowl. The two then sat back down where they had been at the table. All three adventurers watched him intently as he grabbed a pestle, then a small white thing and tossed it in.

_ Cr-a-a-ack! _

The noise was so sharp and sudden that it made Annie flinch. It was soon followed by another sharp crack and a loud crunch.. That’s when it hit her was the strange white object had been in the first place, a bone.

In an instant, the real world fell away as her mind whisked her back to three days ago, when she had first woken up, and the fragile bones of her long-dead ladies-in-waiting that she had accidentally crushed underfoot with her first few tender steps in over a hundred years.

Panicking at the memory, Annie squeezed her eyes shut and pressed her palms to her ears, trying to suppress it.But her train of thought could not be stopped; it went past her awakening back into her long, drowsy, murky time when she was trapped inside her unresponsive sleeping body, with the occasional coming and going of her violators. She wanted to scream  _ so _ badly but it was as though she were back in that body again, immobile and unresponsive.

“Annie?  _ Annie _ ?” 

A panicking Armin. She recognized his voice well.

“Don’t touch her; that might make it worse.”

“Is she going to be okay? ?”

“She’s fighting some internal demons right now. We can help when she’s regained herself, for the most part, but touching her is probably a bad idea.”

Her mind screamed its thanks as her consciousness dragged her back into its chaotic current of wild, whirling memories, going further and further back into her past, passed even the spinning wheel she remembered pricking her finger on, all the way to  _ when she was but a small child. _

_ She was sitting sitting on her mother’s lap, listening to her story, and how she had gone from a simple peasant girl into a princess (not queen quite yet; Annie’s grandmother was still on the throne and wasn’t planning to abdicate for some time) just by doing as she had been asked of by three old, grey, flax-spinning hags. _

_ Of course, Annie had no idea who these so-called “aunts” of her mother was, nor any idea what a spinning wheel was. She had only heard of it through stories, and that they had been banned from the kingdom since before she was born. _

_ Thinking back on it, it only made her falling asleep from pricking her finger on a spindle all the more tragic. She realized this when her memory flashed forward for a second, to when she turned eighteen, and she saw herself lightly touch the spinning wheel before crumpling to the ground. _

_ The memories started to blur together, going faster and faster. Snowfall, snow melt, warm breezes, and reddening leaves all morphed and blended into one memory, with people she both knew and didn’t entering her bedroom faster than she could blink an eye. _

_ Slowly, she felt herself being slo _ wly pulled out of her own trance. Her heartbeat was significantly calmer than it had been and became relaxed as her hearing faded back in and she heard the sound of two friendly voices. Her thoughts slowed down and the desperate panic that had been rising up in her throat just minutes ago stopped clawing its way up her throat and was sated. Her muscles relaxed, her legs slowly slipping into a criss-cross position on the floor and her arms stopped tightly hugging her stomach and fell back down to her lap, resting there. The calming crackles of the flickering fire helped steady her breathing until she felt in complete control of herself.

“Are you okay, Annie?” Armin asked, clearly still concerned, though no longer panicking. He sat several meters away from her, next to Jean at the table, so that she had a good amount of personal space.

“Better,” she breathed in reply, still thinking about the strange memory surge pertaining to her past. She remembered the tail end of the conversation between him and Marco and considered thanking them both out loud for not touching her. Being caught up in…  _ those _ … memories at the time, she wasn’t sure how her mind would have interpreted it.

“It’s okay, Annie; I’m done with the bones for the day,” Marco assured her.

_ Huh _ , she thought.  _ He figured out that it was the bones that triggered the flashback. Or maybe Armin told him about how we met. _ She relaxed. Either way, she was fine. Even if he had to crush bones again, she was at least mentally prepared for it.

Annie crawled over to the table and sat across from the two boys as they waited for the other two potions to be finished.

She looked out of a window. Outside, snow delicately fell down from the pale, grey clouds, softly layering the world in a blanket of fresh white. Staring at it, she realized that it did not scare her.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> hey guys! *weakly waves* it's been a while. ha. ha. ha. ... ha. sorry 'bout that. winter's my unproductive month because for some reason, sunlight charges my motivation, and then the night is when it all comes out and manifests itself, but, being winter, there's not enough sunlight to charge my motivation beyond regular schoolwork, sooooo.... =w= break time. plus, my wi-fi's been getting cut out at like, ten every night, sooooooo. no google docs for me. besides offline sync. but i always fear losing my offline edits. plus no computer after ten at night except weekends. soooo. forgive me. i've been having a bit of trouble getting to sit down and write.  
> but like i always say, if life doesn't get a little hectic every once in a while, you're doing it wrong. :P  
> on a side note, my friend got assigned to write a lord of the flies fanfic so i wrote it for him. it was great. it had a maid cafe in it. and i screamed with my artist friend about how great it is to collaborate with fic/art and to get notes on tumblr. please leave feedback for minor artists, guys, we really need it.  
> anyway, long-ass author's note aside (ahahaha who am i kidding, they're always like this), i chose today to update because it's actually my anniversary of posting fic. like, anywhere. well, specifically fanfiction.net, but like. it's for this other multi-chap, slice-of-life, kind-of-second-gen fic that i have chosen not to post here. so. i'm updating everything and posting a oneshot somewhere. i'm not sure what fandom yet. (actually i do know but it's one where there's literally like five people so. obviously pertains to none of you)  
> i've been a little hesitant to post this for the longest time because i was unsure of my portrayal of annie losing her fear of the cold and the snow after being the snow queen. but you know. it's probably okay. (don't take my word for it though, and correct me if i'm wrong)  
> anyway. extra-long author's note aside, thank you all so much for supporting me!!!!! i love all of you who kudoed or commented or subscribed so much!!!!! *blows kiss to all of y'all* okay that was awkward, never doing that again.  
> bye!!!!!!!! and have a great day~~~!!!!


	25. Riddle

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> eren, ymir, and christa return to le levi and hanjo's castle and wow things happen because eren's being a bit of a bitch (extremely bad and confusing pun not originally intended but now that i realize it it's totally intended)

The Witch was gone just as fast as he had arrived, much to Eren’s dismay, taking Mikasa with him.

“It’s okay, Fuzzy,” Ymir said in a _terrible_ attempt to comfort the wolf, awkwardly petting him as she talked. “Ol’ Zekey-Poo’ll probably just add her to his hoard in his castle, and then you can go and rescue her and, uh, figure out how to reverse the damage… soon.”

Christa nodded enthusiastically along with Ymir’s words.

“Who’s… _Zekey-Poo_?” Eren asked, not sure if he really wanted to know the answer.

“Oh, _pffff_ , that’s just my ol’ nickname for the old man. You know, _The Witch,_ and all. His name’s Zeke, and he’s a stupid old _fart_ of a man. Thinks that because all fairy tales end with a ‘happily ever after,’ if he makes the world into a fairy tale, then everyone will live happily ever after. Kind of convenient how he forgets that everyone who doesn’t fit into the hero archetype ends up being a Big Bad to be defeated or destroyed sooner or later.”

Eren rolled onto his back. “Why didn’t you _tell_ us some of that stuff _earlier_ ? ? ? Then we wouldn’t have had all that convoluted, _‘ooh, this is all for your happy ending, hurr-durr I don’t make any sense,’_ monologuing crap!”

Ymir shrugged. “You didn’t ask.”

Eren heaved an exasperated sigh. Christa clicked her tongue disapprovingly.

Ymir rolled her eyes. “I’m sorry,” she halfheartedly apologized.

“Look,” Christa whispered, her voice low and hoarse and quiet from disuse. Both Eren and Ymir looked at her with surprise, which was reflected right back at them in Christa’s eyes: apparently, she hadn’t realized she could talk either.

“Look,” she repeated. Though no stronger than before, it was filled with determination. “What just happened– that sucked for you. A lot. I would know what it’s like to be separated from the one you love most and be unable to do anything about it.”

Ymir flushed, tears forming at the corners of her eyes at Christa’s words, though she held them back.

“You helped save me, helped reunite me with Ymir, and as a reward, I will return the favor. Beneath this room, at the base of the tower, there is a horse in a shed. Take him, for without Zeke holding his power over myself and this tower, tracking everything that goes on in the vicinity, Ymir and I will not need him. We can take our time getting to where we want. You, on the other hand, might not have that luxury. The horse can take you wherever you need to be at just a simple command. Take him, and make good use of him against The Witch,” she rasped.

“Wait– but– _hands_ ,” Eren objected.

“You can _talk_? ?” Ymir cried in disbelief almost simultaneously.

Christa allowed a small smile to grace her face. “Yes, Ymir, I can talk now. I knew from the moment Zeke left that he had relinquished his Curse on me. And I truly do love you.”

Ymir began to actually cry.

Eren rested his head back on the ground. “I’m _very_ sorry to be interrupting your moment, but _haaands_. I kind of need them.”

“As well as a pair of balls, you sissy,” Ymir snapped. “Can’t even beat an old magic man abducting your fiancée as a spry, young, _vicious_ wolf not ten meters away.”

“Auughfbstfbst*.”

“What did you say?”

He sighed, scratching restlessly at the floor without actually getting up. “Nothing… Except that I need _hands_.”

“If it will help, the two of us can help you ride it back to a place where you can get better accommodations,” Christa offered. “I truly do want to see you succeed in your quest against The Witch.”

Eren thought about Hange and what she could do to help him in this situation. Considering she was the expert in the fairy tale subject, and the leader (now that he thought about it) of this organized quest, it would make good sense to go back to her. After all, that was the plan had Mikas not been abducted.

“There’s one place we can go. Ane I’m sure the owner would let you two stay as long as you need to. I’m not really one to talk _for_ him, but I get the feeling he’s a little lonely. Even if he isn’t, if you bother his servant and keep out of his hair, I’m sure he won’t mind all _that_ much. Plus, his servant _loves_ magic; it’s her _life_. Throw her a tidbit of what you know every so often and I’m pretty sure she’ll convince the owner to let you stay,” he replied, starting out slowly but soon speeding up to normal.

“Let’s go, then! Avery is a very good horse; I’m sure he’ll take us there in no time!”

“How will we get down?”

“I’ll let down my golden hair one last time. Ymir can climb down, then I’ll cut off my hair and glide down with you. You don’t weigh _that_ much, right?”

“Errr…”

“It’s okay. It won’t matter in the end. I’m stronger than I look because, you know, twenty kilograms of hair weighing me down all the time really worked on my muscles. You don’t have to worry… er… Fuzzy?”

“Eren. Freckle-face just gave me a bad nickname.”

“Excuuuse you, Fluff Brain, every freckle is a blessed kiss from the sun above.”

“Yeah, well _I_ see a bunch of little _target points_ all screaming to be _scratched_.” To emphasize his point, Eren dragged a claw across the floor, making a horrid, high-pitched screeching noise.

“I can _see_ some again. I could box your ears so badly they’ll bleed. Unlike last time, where I missed because I was _blind_.” She dug the point of her sword into the grout cementing the stones together, making an equally grating, screechy sound.

Eren could only huff in response.

The knight rubbed at her eyes and readjusted her grip on her sword. “Will you be needing this later, or can I bring it down with me? Don’t wanna leave it here if I don’t have to in case something hostile attacks and I have to save you.”

“Aww, tha–”

“Not you, Fuzzball.”

“Thanks.” His voice was much flatter and less joking this time around.

Christa nodded slightly, ignoring the snippy people around her. “There’s nothing up here that I can use to cut anything, otherwise I would have long flown out of Zeke’s creepy hands. You might want to trim yours too, Ymir– it’s getting kind of long.”

Ymir’s hand went to the base of her ragged, matted ponytail and pulled it over her shoulder. She held it up to her face and squinted at it, then pulled it away, wrinkling her nose in disgust. Wordlessly, she brought her sword all the way up to her neck and cut her hair off in one smooth motion. Eren watched intently as the matted mess fell to the floor with a soft _thud_.

She looked straight at the small blonde girl, prompting Eren to do the same, and said, “Christa, dear Christa, let down your long-ass hair, so that we may climb it like a stair.” However, she said it in a much gentler tone than earlier in the day, to the point where it sounded almost… affectionate.

Christa cracked a smile, showing a few of her pearly whites. She took a few running– practically _flying_ – steps towards the window, and then skidded lightly to a stop, flapping her wings to help with her balance. “As you wish, milady.”

* * *

 

The return trip to Levi’s castle went by in a blur to Eren. Or perhaps it was simply the horse, Avery, moving so quickly that it really had been but a blur. Whichever it was, it mattered not to the young, dazed wolf on its back, sitting squished between the two maidens.

His stomach twisting and lurching in both guilt and fear, he led the girls through the gate and up to the door, where they knocked politely.

“I really don’t understand why we have to knock,” Ymir loudly whispered, “There’s an enormous hole in the wall just a few meters away.”

“To be poli–” Christa began to chide, but was cut off by a sudden, near sing-song voice Eren had come to know well the last few days.

“ _There’s a hole in the wall; just come in through there and we’ll clean it up later,_ ” Hange called, the _scuff-scuff_ of her shoes on stone growing clearer as she drew nearer. Before anyone could get close enough to climb in, however, she poked her head through the wall and looked everyone over. And as she did so, her expression morphed from neutral to pleased to concern.

“There’s a dining hall down that way,” she told their guests, pointing them in the right direction while subtly urging them to go without her guidance. Ymir opened her mouth to say something, but Christa elbowed her just beneath her ribs, so nothing came out, and they simply walked away in the direction they had been pointed in.

The magician crouched down so that she could talk to Eren face-to-face. He curled his lip with a slight disdain that she would even _consider_ disrespecting his currently shorter-than-the-average-human’s stature, let alone actually do it, but otherwise actively avoided eye contact and verbal communication. Hange sighed, hopping from side to side as she struggled to remain in his direct line of sight.

“Eren, I’m not going to fight you on this,” she said, growing irritated at his refusal to look at anyone. “ _What_ happened to Mikasa? Is she at least alive?”

The wolf jerked his head so that she was out of his line of sight again, slouching so low to the ground that his nose practically touched the stone floor. He made no sound and no other response. He knew very well that he wasn’t going to be able to get anywhere without letting Hange pry _something_ out of him, but communication wasn’t exactly high up on his list of things he wanted to do at the moment.

Hange took a deep, calming breath. “Okay. Let’s take this one step at a time. You don’t have to talk, just nod your head for yes and shake it for no. Did you get that?”

For a full minute, he did nothing, simply processing the question and taking his time considering whether or not to respond. After taking careful thought, he dipped his head ever so slightly in a halfhearted nod.

“Oh, thank goodness, we’re getting somewhere. Can you talk?”

Eren made a displeased grunt, slouching so low it took more effort to keep his shoulders from touching the ground than to just lie down.

“I’m not asking for you to actually talk if you don’t want to. I’m just asking if you’re still capable of speech.”

He slowly nodded again.

“Gotcha, so you’re just having a bit of a mood. At the very least, that means the progress of your Curse hasn’t made any recent significant leaps forward.” She paused, becoming lost in thoughts and possibilities. She shook them away, having to focus on the situation at hand. “Is Mikasa still alive?”

A third slow nod.

“Is she just coming later?”

He shook his head, just as slightly and slowly as his nods had been.

Hange shifted her feet so that instead of squatting with all her weight on the balls of her feet, she could comfortably sit cross-legged in front of Eren. For a while she also said nothing, choosing instead to simply rock back and forth as she thought about what to ask next.

“Eren,” she said at long last, her tone gentle. “Can she at least help herself?”

The wolf only flopped forward onto the floor, not even moving a muscle.

A sigh. “Eren,” said Hange, tugging on his ear. “If she’s just turned into the damsel in distress, it has to have been bad. Mikasa’s strong, if mostly coming from her Curse. And, well, you can’t help yourself if you don’t have her, let’s be honest here.”

He pushed her hand none too gently away from his face head; her tugging had become annoying.

She stood up, staring down at him. “Get up.”

He didn’t move.

She nudged him with her foot. “Get _up_ ,” she repeated, crossing her arms.

Eren rolled over, bared his fangs in irritation, and snarled.

“I’m not having any of this; get _up_ !” When he made no effort to stand again, she forcefully rolled him back onto her stomach using her foot, and before he could do anything about it, picked him up without any struggle. “You’ll have time to be a moody teenager later, for now you have to get your bum off the floor and _work_ . You wanted revenge, didn’t you? You wanted to return to how you should be, didn’t you? You wanted to live happily ever after with your fiancée, _didn’t you_? You can’t exactly get married, have three kids, and have that happily ever after as you save each other’s skins from certain death all time time if there’s only one. It takes two to tango, as they say.”

Eren grunted as she half dragged, half carried him through the halls.

“And you know, since you’re not telling me anything, that leaves us with our last resort. I can’t make you talk, but I certainly can give you some kind of advantage along with opposable thumbs at a certain risk.” She dumped him at the door of the bathroom with the secret passageway in it, the same one that they had been in yesterday or the day before. For some reason, he couldn’t quite remember.

Hange heaved the washbasin so that the wall could crack open once more. She looked at Eren once again, her expression somewhat pleading. “You couldn’t save yourself from a paper bag in the state you’re in now, both physically and emotionally. If I had any knowledge about Mikasa’s current state or location, maybe something else could work, but judging from her inability to save herself (which is really saying something), I doubt you can do anything like that.

“So,” she grunted, beads of light sweat breaking out on her forehead from exertion. She opened her mouth to say something more, but her face fell as she gave it some thought. “You know what, I’m probably boring you. You’ll figure it out. Remember the true magic realm I told you about and said you couldn’t enter?”

Eren nodded, tossing a glance at the gap in the walls, now large enough for him to squeeze through.

“Yeah. You’re going to need to go there. It means you’ll never be able to return to the world of man, but if you’re willing to make that sacrifice, you should be able to save both yourself and Mikasa from whatever’s plaguing the each of you faster.” She heaved with the effort, but now sat, resting, on the rim of the basin. “But you know, if you want to try and save her without the anatomical advantage of opposable thumbs and maybe a sword, then that’s cool too. But, statistically speaking, you’ll be less likely to succeed. At the end of the day, it’s your choice to make.”

She paused for a second, and when he made no effort to relay his story, she sighed. “When you get to the other side, look for the blood red flower with a pearl in the center. Pick it, and all that is plaguing you will be lifted for twenty-five hours, no more, no less. After that, everything will return to as it was and you’ll have to find a permanent solution, if you hadn’t found one during that time frame. You got all that?”

Eren allowed himself to slowly process this information, though a mild buzz in the back of his mind kept him from really evaluating his options. Either way, his mind was already made up from the moment Hange started talking about them. Without a word, he lifted himself up off the ground, gave her a respectful nod, squeezed through the crack, and turned left into the soft blue light.

The sharp crackles and snaps of the torches in the hall leading to the hazelnut tree gradually died away, replaced by a soft, monotonous buzzing as the normal ambient noise. Soon enough, Eren’s mind filtered the buzzing out and, aside from the soft _clack-clack_ ing his claws made on the floor, was left with a horrible, _horrible_ feeling of loneliness and dread.

For what felt like hours, an awful sinking feeling pervaded his mind, gnawing a pit of anxiety into his gut, planting back the seeds of fears he hadn’t thought about in years.

A solid smack of hoof hitting stone sounded through the hall, snapping Eren out of his thoughts and to attention.

A silver doe, probably _the_ doe that had led him and his companions to the castle in the first place, stood before him, staring sternly down upon him with her large (though truthfully somewhat lifeless looking) eyes. Eren trembled slightly before her, despite being the same height as her shoulder.

She looked over her shoulder, turned heel and began to spring away. Panicking at the thought of perhaps missing something important, the wolf dashed after her, only to be stopped by the earth beneath him suddenly beginning to tremble.

He yelped, a sharp spike of fear driving through him as he desperately sought stability, and when the ground finally ceased its shaking, he looked up and before him was an enormous, white bearded dragon with narrow eyes that glowed a bright orange; long, swirling horns that curved upward from behind its head; great, leathery wings that made the entire creature appear far larger than it actually was; and was covered in silver scales that shimmered in the dim light. Behind it was a bright, white gate, its glow bathing the room in its brilliant light.

Eren took a step backwards, then two, then three, keeping low to the ground in a defensive position.

The dragon growled, a low rumbling sound that caused the ground to vibrate, flapping its wings once, twice. It narrowed its eyes and leaned in to stare at the comparatively tiny wolf in front of him. It drew back after a moment of observing.

“ _So,_ ” it boomed. “ _You wish to enter the true realm of magic?_ ” Eren was not given an opportunity to answer before it continued. “ _Before you can pass through those gates, you must answer my riddle._ ”

It cleared its throat and began reciting:

_“You saw me where I never was and where I could not be._   
_“And yet within that very place, my face you often see._   
_“What am I?”_

Eren stared at the behemoth of a creature before him, for he had no idea of what the answer was, nor any idea of how to solve for it. Its silver scales shimmered in the light, reflecting some brightly (and annoyingly) back into his eyes. He flinched, shying away as he tried to shield his face, but when he caught a dim glimpse of himself in the scales, he paused.

His shoulders were slumped, his tail was touching the ground, and his eyes had a hollow stare to them. His eyes held more open fear than he remembered seeing in them for the longest time. Truly, he looked like a mess.

 _My face you often see_. He blinked.

He ran the riddle over in his head again, and the answer fell into his head.

“A reflection.”

The silvery-white dragon nodded solemnly and transformed in a storm of white petals into the silver doe. She glanced at him, took a hesitant step forward, then sprang lightly away, through the gate into the realm.

Eren breathed a sigh of relief. He began following her, glad that, at the very least, he had a guide.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> *enters huddled in 10k blankets* what's up scrubs i'm back. next week's spring break (WHOO SPRING BREAAAAK) so maybe there'll be an update then too. april fool's day (along w/season 2 WHOOOHOHOHOOOO) is coming up too. ;3c i don't usually make that face so you know april fool's day is a Big Deal. no i'm not deleting the work or whatever y'all are probably expecting... it's just a purple latin speaking duck coming along and dealing drugs.  
> am i serious about that? only time will tell.  
> also about that * that y'all may or may not remember, that wasn't a keyboard smash that was a really bad translation of a strange sound into letters.  
> anyway hope y'all had fun this was fun please subscribe or kudo they make me feel great and honestly like a comment or smth would be extremely great. responses to my writing would be great yanno i mean i love yelling into the void and all but yeah. do whatever you want.  
> hope y'all have a great day~~~~


	26. Visitor

Jean acted a little bit different on the way back to Levi’s castle. He hummed softly, smiling contentedly, and there was a slight spring in his step that made riding markedly different than the way there. Yet when asked about it, everything was simply brushed off as either a random good mood or a fortunate side effect of the potion Marco had given him.

The trio arrived back just as the sun finished setting. Jean dropped them off at the hole in the wall, and after they exchanged their goodbyes, he galloped away.

Armin watched him leave. Even after the centaur was out of sight, he stared at the place he last saw him, though by this point he wasn’t really looking. Rather, he was focused on his thoughts, on their experience with Marco, and how far he had come, both physically and psychologically, in the past few days. He marvelled to think at how all this might not have happened had he not gotten lost or had not even gone out hunting for that silver doe.

“Armin.” Annie’s voice caught him by surprise. He blinked several times to focus his vision and adjust to the darkness, then turned to look at her. 

She was staring intently up at him, her eyes dimly reflecting the light of the moon. She jerked her head towards the castle, whose lights were just starting to come to life, reminding him of their job that they still had to finish.

“Right,” Armin breathed, relaxing his muscles. He hadn’t even realized that he’d tensed them up.

Together, they walked inside to find the hall was empty. The lights that they had seen come to life outside were solely to their right, while the hall to the left, where Armin remembered Annie had been rooming the other night, was dark. A little bit put off by the lack of light in that direction, he tugged on Annie’s sleeve, pulling the two of them towards the dining hall. Annie gently pulled herself out of his grasp but followed him anyway.

At first, he heard quiet chatter coming from the dining hall, but before long, he noticed it faded away, and the only thing he could hear was the ominous echo of their footsteps ringing through the corridor.

He pushed open the door into the hall and, when he blinked away the ghosts that danced before his eyes from the sudden brightness, saw a tall, freckled knight sitting and cuddling with a dainty, blonde angel. Both stared at him and Annie, and the latter stared back, for a few seconds before they all simultaneously broke eye contact.

“Who’re you?” the knight grunted. Armin legitimately couldn’t tell what their gender was, but the short hair and hoarse voice, not to mention the fact that it was very rare that a woman was given the position of a knight, led him to believe that it was a man.

He suddenly flinched, realizing that he was being asked a question. He bowed his head ever so slightly (the knight was of a lower ranking than he, after all, even if his princely title meant nothing in this world anyway), and said, “My name is Prince Armin Arlert of the southern Kingdom Shiganshina. And you, sir…?”

“Lady,” the knight snapped. It was so remarkably rude (to Armin, anyway) that he flinched again. The knight– lady? His mind was reeling; he wasn’t sure what honorific to use on them now– folded their arms across their chest, glaring pointedly at him. “Ymir,” they finished, “I’d like to be addressed as Lady Ymir, Princey boy. Or should I say prissy boy. You look like a pansy who couldn’t survive ten seconds in an actual battle.”

Frankly, the stranger’s rude introduction shook Armin to the core; he had absolutely no idea how to respond to what they had just told him. Or what their gender was. Though, judging from the demand to be addressed as “ _ Lady _ Ymir”, it seemed it was indeed a lady. Even though the voice and dress seemed to disagree.

The angel elbowed the knight, making a loud  _ clang! _ when she hit. She sighed, unbothered by the grating ring echoing throughout the room. 

“Ah, yes. And this is Lady…” Lady Ymir trailed off and looked down, as though unsure of the girl’s name. The blonde craned her neck up to the knight’s ear and whispered something into it. “Lady Christa.”

Armin nodded, confused and half expecting for there to be some long-winded commentary on the angel, just as there had been on him. But instead, there was nothing, and the room was filled with an awkward silence. Annie simply stood there with him, saying nothing and moving not a muscle.

Needless to say, the awkward silence was very awkward until Hange walked silently in behind them and tapped in on the shoulder. One girly scream and a snort of amusement from Ymir later, he and Annie were in the dark left hallway, following Hange out to their (separate) chambers.

“Those two seemed like they were really good friends,” Armin said, trying to break the silence. He’d been assured that they would be led to their rooms afterwards, so it seemed safe to talk about them.

Hange and Annie sighed.

“What? Did I say something?”

“Armin,” the magician began, “They’re lesbians.”

It was like an anvil had been dropped on his head.

“Oh.” 

_ How unconventional. _

Well, at the very least,  _ that _ answered several of his questions.

~***~

Night passes by swiftly when you’re sleeping. 

Armin crawled into bed after saying his prayers, and while he didn’t exactly fall asleep the moment his head touched the pillow (he heard strange whisperings from outside his window, keeping him awake for what felt like hours), he still found himself drifting back into consciousness when the rays of early morning light danced lazily across his face. He yawned, stretched, then got out of bed to change out of the pajamas Hange had provided for him.

As he walked, he noticed that the castle felt strangely hollow. The previous mornings he had woken up and there was always someone bustling about, whether it be Hange or Eren, bothering someone else or perhaps simply working or chatting. Yet, as he noted before, it felt empty this morning.

He came down the stairs, hoping it was simply that he was the first one awake, although that would have been unusual. When he found no one, he silenced his footsteps, fear creeping over him.

He checked Annie’s room first. She was sleeping soundly, her gentle snores calming his racing heartbeat some.

After, he snuck into the kitchen. He found Hange there, looking somewhat tired and forlorn as she leaned against the wall, watching a pot boil. Seeing as she was awake, he stepped into the kitchen to chat with her.

“Hange?” he queried, tiptoeing nearly silently in. She looked up with exhausted eyes and smiled at him. She still said nothing.

He faltered. “Is there something wrong?” Quickly, he ran his mind over all the things that seemed different about this morning, aside from the hollow feeling. 

He was the first one up, that was one (usually it was Eren and Mikasa who rose with the sun, he had noted from his few days with them), and it was just overall absurdly quiet (since it seemed that Eren was always loudly pestering someone). Both of those had to do with…

“Have Eren and Mikasa returned yet?” he asked aloud.

Hange adjusted her leaning position so that she could cross her arms comfortably. “Yes,” she answered. Before Armin could continue, she did. “But only Eren. I’m not sure what happened to Mikasa. So I sent him into the realm of true magic to fetch a flower. I don’t know when he’ll be back, but hopefully the potions you got from Marco can boost him even more and we’ll find a way to find Mikasa.”

_ Well, that explains absolutely everything. _ Armin relaxed. Having no other questions himself, he leaned against the wall opposite Hange and stared at the pot with her. For several minutes, they stood in silence, though it wasn’t awkward. 

“Have… have you and Levi been okay these last two days? I mean, it seemed you two were good friends with Petra. And you haven’t really addressed her death at all, and from what I’ve seen, Levi’s just been alone in his room ever since. And with a bunch of teenagers just running in and out of your broken home– it seems like it would be stressful.”

The silence changed from nonchalant to tense, with Armin’s words hanging in the air. At last, Hange let out a sigh.

“To be honest with you, kiddo, the last few days since you kids first came have been more of a daze than anything. I haven’t had time to sit down and think about these things, and to some degree, that helps. I know Master Levi’s been grieving in his room since he has that kind of free time, but I? I guess I’ve been coping with the thought of her death by just… not thinking about it. Cooking. Cleaning. Sleeping.” She rested her chin on her hand and her arms on the kitchen counter.

“We were friends, but Levi and I both loved her. Platonically. You get it? Levi had no other real friends, and while I have some, I’ve been out of touch with them since the castle fell into the semi-magical realm.”

Armin nodded. He hadn’t really thought about his life back in Shiganshina in the last few days. He wondered if anyone missed him…  _ nah _ . But now that he had the time, he felt a twinge of guilt pulling him back to his few friends.

Hange sighed again. “And I guess in some ways I’ve just changed because of her death. And so has Levi.” Her lips curled upwards in half a smile, and her eyes held a little bit of mirth in them for the first time in a while. “We’ll cope just fine, Armin. Don’t you worry about us.”

She suddenly stood properly. “There’s someone at the door,” she simply said, padding out the door.

Having nothing better to do, Armin followed her. He had absolutely no idea how Hange could possibly know if and when there were visitors, but he supposed it made sense: she was magical, and she had lived in the castle for what was probably many years.

And it seemed she was correct about there being people at the door. Well, less of them being actually  _ at _ the door and rather standing awkwardly in front of the hole in the wall that was yet to be repaired.

Armin peeked at them from a distance as Hange chatted with them. 

Both were tall men. One was blond and brawny, with a jaw that looked like it could cut through stone, and the man himself looking as though he ate mountain lions for breakfast. The other was even taller, though this one had dark brown hair and was built not unlike a beanpole. His rather frightened-looking eyes darted around rapidly as he sweated buckets and wrung his hands over and over again. He was hunched over, as though he were scared of heights and if he stood too tall, he’d scare himself by looking down.

Armin crept a little closer to the gaping hole in the wall, though fear made him keep out of the two men’s direct line of sight, in order to eavesdrop on their conversation.

However, he was never the best at stealth and it really showed when the big blond one apparently spotted him and smiled. 

“Hey, kid,” he said, his booming voice friendly. Armin squeaked in terror, but there was no hiding now. The tall man stuck out his hand, even though Armin was nowhere near enough to shake it. “The name’s Reiner. This’s Bertholt, but I like to call him Bertl.”

“Salutations,” the beanpole man softly greeted. 

Curiosity overtaking his fear, Armin crept forward and daintily took the huge man’s calloused hand in his own small one and shook it. Doing so was strangely comforting– almost as if he knew the man from once upon a dream. But he knew that was just déjà vu. He doubted there was any single thread connecting them so that he could even remotely consider having known him.

“We’ve heard that you can help us with a curse of ours,” Reiner told the both of them. 

Hange crossed her arms and raised an eyebrow. Armin frankly agreed with her suspicion. Just coming right up to their door and asking for help was unusual. How had they found the castle? Armin had long deduced that it was an out-of-the-way location, hence why their only visitor for years had been Petra, and he and his friends were guided by magic and/or fate.

But  _ this _ ? As warm and friendly as they seemed, there was definitely something off.

“Can you describe it?” 

“I traded my cow to a strange, blond man for some beans, and now my house is stuck in a castle on a cloud,” Bertholt shyly piped up. “It would be really great to get it back, but now there’s a giant using it as a chicken coop.”

Hange curtly nodded. “ _ Jack and the Beanstalk _ ,” she said, “And the bean dealer must’ve been the Zeke person I heard about from Ymir.” Strangely enough, Armin could have sworn he saw a flash of recognition in both men’s eyes when Hange mentioned Ymir.

She threw a glance back inside the castle, then looked back at the newcomers. She looked inside again, then back outside. She sighed.

“Armin, go fetch Annie. You two can help these fine young men. Eren’s still not back, and as much as I wanted to have you help me figure a few things out before he did, this seems to be just as important.”

Armin nodded, and as he left, he heard both of the somewhat suspicious strangers mumble their thanks. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i've pretty much given up all hope that i'll ever get a comment on this thing so you know what kids, do whatever you want


	27. Fools 2017

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> *softly cackles*

*record scratch*

*freeze frame*

LAST TIME, ON  _ DRAGON BALL Z _ ! ! ! ! !!! ! ! ! !! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! !!

HANGE AND MOLBIT WERE HAVING A MEMEOFF AS THEY MEMED FOR THE TITLE OF THE NEXT MEME LORD!

“Wait, whos Moblit,” Armin asked,

“My FROAKIE! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! !” HNG Ggiggled. She put her hand into her pocket and pulled out a small, bue frog, giggling. The blue frog sighed, adjusted his head of extremely good-looking hair, and hopped off Hange’s hand.

“MOBLIT, NOOOOOOOOO!”

A brught purple duck wasddled in holding his head high with dignity. Everyone stared at it as it adjusted the yellow and red polka-dotted tie sitting smartly at his neck. 

Everyone stared at the new creature before him.

The duck stared everyone in the eye, ruffling his extremely purple purple feathers. Actually, it wasn’t so much of purple than it was a deep mauce. Rather, only fifteen of his feathers were that deep mauve color; they were all on this left wing on the very tips. Another eighty three were a SILGHT Shade darker and four of his head feathers were a righ, shiny, ultra-fiolet (uou can tell they’re important because they’re an EXTREMELY important because they were ULTRAvolet). His tail feathes were of the palest lavender, ofd most of his 6,728,333,333,333,333,333,333,333,333,333,333,332 body feathers were a lovely gradient between that pale lavender and a bright, crash magenta-ish sappire that came together to form the purest purple ever seen. It was so purple, Moblit the Froakie almost started crying at the sight of it because it was now Moblit the Froakie’s job to love purple it’s canon pass it on Moblit loves purple.

Purple prosing aside, the abetiful tear-inducingly purple duck opened his round, hsiny, orangey yellow duck bill snd grandly said………, “Quack,” ……………………………in LATIN.. 

“Wat did he say?” Armin whispered to Annie. He assumed she could speak latin despite it being a dead language because plot twist Annie has ben dead for the entire fanfi and also a halucinationof Armin’s but everyone just kind of rolled with it.

Gost Annie stared at him for a few seconds. Then, she dabbed. But, the decond she dabbed, her brain turned into long, midnight black hairwith purple streaks leaching down to her kneepits. For the first time, Armin noticed her eyes were an icy blue like a limpet’s tears. Uh,hhh, Annie’?” he asked.

Annie glared at him wit her pale bule eyes. She stuck her middle finger up at him.

Not knowing what gettign flipped off meant, Armin blinked.

“My name isn’t Annie, it’s Enoby Dark’ness Raven Demensia Way, so reSPECT IT, PREP! ! ! !”

“Do you bite your thumb at me?” he demnded, preparing his thumb to bite it back at her.

“I do bite my thumb at thee, good felow,” a new, freckled voice bellowed. It was ymir. Ymir was the new freckled voice butting in and biting her thumb at everyone in the shakespearean equivalent of flipping someone off.

“And this is our cue to exit, abducted by bears wile getting married,” and golden angel added, grabbing the freckled-flio-off-thumb-biting girl’s fand (that’s face ADN hadn), pulling her down to the blunde’s level and they started messily making out in the castle parlor.

“Nope!” Levi snapped, dashing in and smacking the bottl-flipping lesbian couple with his favorite cornbroom.

“Levi, isn’t that homophobi?” Hange pointed out. “And according to the fandom, aren’t you gay?”

“I do’t care that they’re lesbians: but no holding hands! No one! No one holds hands in THIS castle! Not that wolf and that red girl, not the master blond(e)s, non! No hand holding in this fic! That is  _ nsfw _ , 18+ content! ! ! ! ! This is a slef-respecting fic about historically accurate and therefore carnal fairy tales and the gruesoe, horrible death of a Witch! Absolutely no explicit romance allowed!”

“But all the important ships have aleredy said I love you to each other,” Hange extrapolated.

“EXCUSE YOU, ANNIE AND i ARE AN IMPORTANT SHIP!” Armin yeled.

“Sorry, Hamlet, but my name i Beony Dark’ness--”

“No!” Moblit shrieked. “NO MORE M _ Y IMMORTAL _ RFERENCES!”

“That is the face of a broken man, Hange solemnly statedas Moblit-the Not-Froakie-but-to-Compensate-had-Even-Cooler-hair-Than--Froakie-Moblie writhed dramatically on the floor.Annie/Enoby sighed sorrowfully and reluctatnly pulled off her black wig with its purple streaks. “Ths sucks, “ she said, “I paid good money to have this wig grow out every time I dabbed.”

“Annie.”

“Yeah?” not-Annie answered.

“Dabbitg hasn’t been invented yet,” another Not-Annie gently told Annie.

“Wait, why is the world suddenly full of either Annie’s or Not-Annies?” A third ot-Annie asked.

“Just as the worlf can be divided into Those-Who-Can-Kill-Macbeth (A.K.A. “Not-Macbeth Killers) and Those-Who0Cannot0Kill0Macbeth (Ak.A. “Macbethers”), this universe has its Anies and it’s Not-Annies. Both are eqully important tothe fate of the antagonists,” Not Annie #1 gravely explained.

“Woah, woah, woah, woah, woah, woah, woah. Woah. There,” Annie cut in. “That’s getting into SPOILER TERRITORY. You don’t want everyone to unsubscribe because they got spoilers on how the fic ends,do you ?”

“Well, eprsonally, I like reading about the journey rather than focusing on how the story eds. I mean, yeah, we know how it ends now, but if you just unsubscribe right there an then you miss all the banter and little jokes and nuances of the story. I mean, plus, we’re on our final arc. It shouldent’ take htat much longer. It’s worth sticking around for,” Not-Annie #3 said. 

“Wow, that jus got ddep, “Not-Annie #2 commnetde. “

“I know. It mades my fear of the Kool-Aid man seem monir and insignificant in comparison,” Annie said.

“Wait, so how were we getting into spoiler territory?”

“WAIT what happened to our dab-off?”

You mean the one witht he duck?”

“Yeah, wth the duck.”

“The amazingly purple duck never dabbid in the first place, though,” not-Annie #4 confuzzeldly siad.

Annie shrugged.

Zeus himself suddenly decended from the heavens abvoe with his everything dangling everywhere. Though frankly you coun’t uite tell what anything was since some of his more manly bits didn’t seem to appear where they belongs. Oh, who are we kidding, this is zeus, his manly man bits are never where they belong.

“Hello, adventurers!” Zeus bellowed merrily (both in the drunken and hapy senses_ “The time has come to sire a new legion of adv-- OOF!”

The “oof” was in pain. He was, in face, caught off guard by the delightful duchess Annie Leonhardt. Getting caught off-guard is simply a phrase that means you were surprised by an abrupt happening. For example if your mother told you she was going to catch all your friends in bags, asphyxiate them in said bags, and then serve their shoulders to you for dinner for the next three weeks, assuming you havd enonugh friends to do that thing for that long, it would have caught you off-guard to find yourself eating their legs like drumsticks rather than their shoulders.

“Of course, children, always remember that eatinganother human is in that context known as “cannibalism” and is, in fact, frowned upon in most societies, in cluding this one.

What caught Mr. Kind-of-the-gods-zeus off guard was not her highness Leonhardt’s beauty, not her abnormally large nose compared to her abnormally msall stature, but rther the fact that she scuker punched the deity straight in his pristine, chiseled jaw.

“Ow!” he screeched, not unlike a girl or a baby. “What was that for?” His voice had gone from deep and unrealisically masculine to high pitched, childish, and exactly how all men would sound if their voices matched how they acted.

“Sorry, it was instinct,” Miss Lion breezily replied, casually cracking her knuckles and glaring threateningly at him, giving the slear subliminal message that if he put his ween anywhere remotely close to her once he found it withou her explicit permission, she’d tear him to ieces AND call Hera so that he’d get grounded.

“Got it. Next generation of adventurers should NOT come from these people,” Zeuse nervously enounciated.

But, before he could leave, an enormous red cloud of ketchup flew in, preventing his return to Olumpus.

“Oh, /Quiznak,” he sighed, and with a snap of his fingers vanished in a poof of pink glitter and ashes, getting replaced by a wrinkly old man. It was……………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………NOT DUMBOLDOR! ! !”

“Pixis?!?!???!” levi squeaked.

“It’s ME!!!” the wrinkly, old, ballsack of a man joyfully cried, several tears just flying straight out of his tear duckst.

“PIXIS!! iV’E TOLD YOU ACROSS LIKE, TWI CRACK CHAPTERS BY NOW! I i _ WON’T _ HAVE A GAY OLD MAN THREESOME WITH YOU AND WHATEVER GAY OLD MAN YOU’VE PICKD UP OFF THE STREET THIS TIME! ! ! ! !I’M NOT GAY! !  IT’S JUST THAT 94% OF THE FANDOM THINKS I AM FOR SOME REASON! ! ! ! !”

“iT’S ‘cuz the fujoshis think you’re hote,” Hange explained.

“I DON’T CARE I DON’T FEEL LIKE HAVING A AY OLD MAN THREESOME SO I. AM. OUT.” Levi disappeared in a poof of pink sparkles and glitter, courtesy of the author rather than Zeus.

The ketchup clouds boomed as a streak of mustard.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i told you i took april fool's day very, VERY seriously around here. i have a grammar correction program installed on my computer and holy cow ahahaha there were 133 common grammatical mistakes and 37 ADVANCED ones that i can't fix unless i paid them. it's okay though because i know my stuff. sorry if i scarred any of you guys with that weird pixis/levi stuff. or confused you with the "i've been telling you for two crack chapters" bit. the pixis/levi is at this point kind of a traditional joke i put in because a friend once joked that he shipped it. the two crack chapters bit would make more sense if you were reading off of ff.net, because that was in reference to this other multi-chapter fic i have which i never chose to put on ao3 for some reason. and it has two crack chapters because well there's one for this year and one for last year. wow amazing. yeah.  
> anyway, hope i didn't give y'all aneurysms with how awful this was. if you're still alive comments or kudos would be greatly appreciated but above all, have a greaaaaaaaaaaat daaaaaaaaaaayyy~


	28. Time Gone By

_A chilly winter breeze nipped painfully at Mikasa's bare face and arms. Her teeth chattered, her arms were covered in goosebumps as she shivered, and it was difficult to blink at times. Large, soft flakes of snow fell delicately down from the pale, grey clouds above, landing gently on her hair, nose, and eyelashes. She sniffled loudly, trying to keep her nose from running too terribly._

_"Eren!" she called, her voice resounding sharply through the crisp winter air. She was all alone, which wasn't particularly unusual for her personally, but to the average onlooker, it certainly was. After all, it's not usual to see a fourteen-year-old girl walking alone, let alone one that clearly wasn't from the area or in the snow._

_A brown furred and green eyed wolf bounded through the snow with a bloody brown rabbit hanging limply from his jaws. As he approached Mikasa, he slowed down to a walk before dropping the rabbit's corpse at her feet and sitting down, cocking his head at her and whining softly._

_Mikasa's mouth tasted like bile as she looked at the dead animal in front of her. She shook her head at Eren. "I don't need it. I'm not hungry, Eren."_

_"You need to eat," the wolf hoarsely replied._

_"I'll be fine," Mikasa insisted, rubbing her arms to keep the blood circulating in them. The wind briefly picked up the moment she said those words, however, the previously small and harmless snowflakes suddenly feeling like little knives digging painfully into her numbed skin and whipping her ebony black hair into her face. Hot tears squeezed themselves out of the corner of her eyes, but she wiped them fiercely away._

_The wolf gave her a peculiar look but began to eat the rabbit himself anyway. Mikasa shivered and took inventory of their surroundings; they were sitting ducks at mealtimes, and considering how young and naïve they still were, the two of them would make easy prey for any predator desperate enough in the harsh winter._

_"It's cold…" She surprised herself with her own words; she hadn't intended to let her true thoughts out._

_"There's a village nearby," Eren told her between ravenous bites of raw rabbit._

_Mikasa dug around in her basket, practically empty after the weeks on the road, and pulled out two frosty coins. "I don't think we can buy anything, though," she dubiously told him, holding out her hand to show him the money. "Not much you can get with just a cen. Particularly so in the wintertime."_

_The wolf pawed at the snow and glanced behind him, assumedly the direction of the village he spoke of. "I'll be right back," he promised, and before Mikasa could object, he ran off, leaving her staring after the snow being thrown up by his paws and the cold, white fog._

_She stood there, silent, watching her breath fog up in her face for several stunned moments._

_The last two years had been hard on them. Eren's father left for a medical emergency in Trost Kingdom just a few days prior to Eren's transformation. He still hadn't returned by the time Mrs. Jaeger vanished._

_It was frankly a miracle when she hadn't been run out of town when the town discovered that she was what they considered to be a bastard child, even though, legally speaking, she wasn't._

_The area they lived in was also known for being superstitious, and after they found that Eren had not died and had instead been transformed into the wolf living with the (at that point believed to be) widowed Mrs. Jaeger, it was made well known that their household was not at all liked._

_So the choice was obvious when Eren's mother vanished without a trace one day. Staying any longer without a guardian would have been suicide. Already facing ridicule and exile for hosting an enchanted creature, had they remained where they were, it was likely that Mikasa would have been burnt at the stake._

_Strangely enough, it wasn't so much Mikasa that needed caring for, since she seemed so rarely hungry or tired since her own parents vanished._

_Depression, she had heard Mrs. Jaeger tell her son once, in a very hushed voice. For some reason, that moment stuck out in Mikasa's mind. It wasn't as though there was anything particularly significant about it, either: she was lying in bed, a blanket laid lovingly over her, as she stared at the blank wall for hours._

_Yet still, the memory stuck out like a stray thorn._

_She brought her stiff fingers up to her mouth and breathed on them, trying desperately to keep them from catching frostbite. If being homeless was hard for the last nine months, then it was impossible for the next three. She took a step in the direction Eren had run off in. He said he'd be back soon, but Mikasa was sure she'd die if she stayed put. At least_ he _had a fur coat and physical adaptations to the cold to keep him from freezing._

_Every muscle she moved cried out in protest. The snow, while soft to the touch, felt like blades of knives shattering into countless pieces beneath her skin when the wind whipped them in her direction. Her hair no longer blew wildly around her head; instead, locks of it were frosted together and prickled her face, neck, and upper back with their icy points. She'd have to either comb it out or cut it off when she got the opportunity._

_She squinted. For some reason, her vision was fading to black around the edges. Her legs seemed like they were made of lead. Her mind muddled, she could feel her senses failing her, and she reached out for something_ – anything– _as her vision faded to black and her unfeeling legs buckled beneath her._

* * *

 

"She's stirring."

 _Everything felt heavy. Her arms, her legs, her eyelids, everything. It wasn't so much as though weights were attached to them, bringing her down, but rather, as if she_ was _the weight._

_She twitched her finger, pins and needles firing up her arm as she did so. Ignoring it, she flexed her hand, opening and closing it to gauge her muscle control. After she felt she had a good grasp on her controls again, she shifted her arm out from where it was pinned beneath her side. It prickled painfully, but it died down soon enough. And the moment it did, she heaved herself into an upright position._

_Stars danced before her eyes, and she tried to blink them away. She felt lightheaded, but she felt something push against her back, keeping her from fainting until her thoughts and vision cleared._

_The first thing she noticed was that her front felt chilled, yet her back felt just fine. As she lifted up her arm so that she could feel her shoulders, something red slipped off of them and onto the wooden floor. At first, she froze, terrified that it was blood, but relaxed when she realized it was far too bright a red to be blood._

" _It's a cloak."_

_Her head shot up in surprise. She knew the voice; it was Eren's, but its abruptness startled her. She grabbed a handful of the material and pulled it over her legs. She said nothing._

" _I'm sorry I ran off without you," he continued, plodding over so that he could sit in front of her. His feet dragged with every step._

_There was about half a minute of silence, punctuated by the frequent crackles and snaps of a hearth._

" _What happened?"_

" _I thought I could find something you'd eat in the village and come back fast, but you fainted, and the cold kept you unconscious until she found you."_

_He jerked his head over to her left, guiding her gaze to a young woman with dark hair in a short ponytail and dozens of freckles. She was sitting poker-faced in a wicker chair, steadily sewing together a shirt. She paused her work when Eren gestured towards her, stared back at Mikasa for a few seconds, then returned to stitching._

" _She brought you back here. I just followed her tracks, and she let me in." He paused again. "You should eat."_

" _I'm just fine."_

 _He suddenly leapt up and headbutted her. "You're_ not _fine. You fainted."_

_She pushed him off her lap and rubbed her hurting jaw. She frowned as they glared at one another, neither one of them willing to back down._

_Her stomach abruptly growled. Mikasa's face went from a glare straight to shock when her stomach betrayed her as Eren's expression became smug._

" _You can't argue with that," he said._

 _Mikasa sighed in defeat. She really_ couldn't _argue with her own body telling her she needed food. "Well, I don't suppose you_ have _any."_

_The woman in the wicker chair stood up, changing out her stitching for a slate on a side table, and crouched down next to the kids' eye level. She hastily scribbled something out on the slate with a slate pencil and handed it to Mikasa._

"The blizzard cleared up while you were asleep. You could go to the inn in the nearby village; they'll give you a cheap meal. They might not let your wolf in, though," _she read aloud. She frowned as the freckled lady took the slate back and erased it. Sure, she understood the reasoning behind the statement, but she still didn't like it._

_Their host handed back the slate with something new scribbled on it:_

Or, if you prefer, I can make you some nettle soup, and you can rest and recover afterwards.

" _Oh," Mikasa said. She felt rather shy quite suddenly because she knew the only thing she could logically ask for was to stay for soup, but she hadn't asked anything from a stranger before. But she swallowed her fear and asked for it._

_The older woman smiled warmly as she got up. She paused for a moment, then offered her hand to Mikasa, still sitting on the floor, to help her up. She accepted and was led over to the bed. Their host left the slate back on the side table as she plodded out of the room, effectively leaving them alone._

_For what felt like hours, neither one looked at or said anything to each other._

" _Hey, Eren?" Mikasa tentatively began, looking up at him. "I'm sorry that I didn't listen to you."_

"' _S fine."_

" _I'm always asking for you to do this, for you to do that, and you always do them for me eventually. And never have you ever asked anything else of me–"_

" _Except for you to just leave me alone sometimes."_

"– _And I always refuse," she said over him. She paused and closed her eyes, taking a deep and somewhat ragged breath before continuing on. "In truth, I'm not sure what I'd do without you. There's absolutely nothing stopping you from running off and leaving me without anyone. But here we are, still together after all these god-awful months of being homeless. And as much as I didn't like you when we first me, I depend on you now."_

_She lowered her gaze again. "I don't appreciate you enough for what you do for me." She pulled the red cloak over her shoulders, keeping it close to stay warm._

" _Thank you for the cloak," she mumbled, feeling hot tears of embarrassment and shame prickling at her eyes._

_Eren got up from his seat by the fire and hopped onto the bed next to her, where he rested his head and front legs on her lap. "It's just a piece of cloth," he nearly scoffed, just barely reining in the mock distaste. "There's no need to get so sentimental over it." He closed his eyes. "I'll always be here to keep you warm for as long as you need."_

_It was at this moment that their host decided to enter the room carrying an earthenware bowl full of a dark green soup on a tray and presenting the meal to the younger girl. She affectionately patted both kids on the head and picked up her stitching before leaving again._

_The watery soup, while mildly flavored, was just what Mikasa needed. Her eyelids grew heavy as her belly felt full for the first time in ages and unable to keep it in anymore, she reached over and pushed the bowl onto the side table with the slate before drifting off to sleep._

* * *

 

_The bright mid-morning sun glared harshly down on the pure, fresh snow, forcing Mikasa to squint in order to see properly. They were entering a village that Eren had spotted earlier._

_All around them, they could hear snippets of rumors surrounding a young woman who lived in a tower just outside the outskirts of town, and that she had short, dark brown hair, and that her face was covered in freckles. She never spoke, only wrote, and in the day gathered nettles but by night brewed them into dangerous potions. They said that she was a witch, whose name was Ilse._

Ilse _._

_The name and description sounded familiar to Mikasa, as though she heard it before. Yet she struggled to attach any sentiment to it, feeling only distrust and disgust to this faceless stranger who practiced strange magic._

_Perhaps she had known Ilse in a dream on time gone by, but life was not that dream, and now was not that time gone by._

_She and Eren walked through the town, keeping a wary eye out for the young woman they never met._

* * *

 

Mikasa opened her eyes to see a room full of screeching, twittering birds of all the colors of the rainbow. She blinked several times, trying to orient herself while simultaneously make sense of the dream that was already fading quickly from her mind.

It had been so strangely vivid, yet also so realistic and familiar, almost as if it had truly happened at some point in their past.

 _Ilse_.

Perhaps she had one or two hazy memories of her besides what they had seen in the village before they decided to burn her. But she couldn't be sure. The faces of both women were hazy in her mind, and even if her dream truly had happened before, they had been locked deep within the recesses of her consciousness for the last few years so that she couldn't access them.

Her head ached, disrupting her train of thought and breaking her focus. Distracted by all the birds, she struggled to recall what she was thinking about.

Unable to do so, Mikasa sighed and tried to fall asleep again.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> *les miserables the heck in* i dreamed a dream on time gone by... when hope was high and life worth living


	29. Monthly Cycle

_“Annie.”_

Annie sighed and rolled over, not yet ready to let go of the veil of sleep that still fogged her mind.

A hand touched her shoulder and gently shook her. Instantly irritated and a slight bit dysphoric, she rolled over again, out of reach of the hand and cracked open an eye to squint at the one touching her. A shock of bright blond hair blurred into view along with bright blue eyes. _Armin. Of course._

She brings her knees up to her chest so that she’s lying in the fetal position. Staring up at the other blond with a grumpy frown, she grumbled, “What’s going on?”

“Get up and change your clothes. Hange’s sending us out with these two men to help them with a Curse,” Armin answered.

Annie rolled over a third time and shut her eyes.. “Five more minutes.” It was not a request.

“Mmkay, but it Hange comes for you, you’re probably going to regret not changing out of your pajamas before stepping outside,” Armin replied and, true to her demands, walked out the door, shutting it behind him.

As soon as she was absolutely sure no one was coming for the next few minutes, her eyelids fluttered open once more, and she sat up in bed to stare out the window at the bright, sunny morning the day was shaping up to be.

She ran a hand through her tangled hair, wondering how much longer, how many more times she’d run off with Armin to help solve a problem before… before… well, she wasn’t sure of what, but there was an eerie feeling looming over her when she thought about all this adventuring out to help people.

She’d never been the kind of person to get attached to anyone before she fell into a coma. Why did she find it so hard to imagine life without these people she had only met a few days ago?

She leaned over the edge of her bed, grabbed a brush off the vanity, and began to cross her legs when one of them brushed up against something cold and wet.

Glancing down, she saw a significant blotch of reddish brown bleeding through the white linen sheets onto the mattress. She’d have to find some clean rags or something soon. She mentally cursed herself for forgetting, though in all honesty she couldn’t really blame herself. It wasn’t easy to count down the days to her next cycle when in a semi-conscious coma. Idly, she wondered if it stopped during that century as she quickly brushed out the worst of the snarls in her hair.

She placed the brush back on the vanity and without too much trouble walked over to the wardrobe. She opened it, and it seemed to sense the difference in her body because it only offered her clothes in various shades of red, brown, and black, and there was a set of clean linen trousers and a cotton pad to stem the flow of blood. Strangely enough, she found this amusing, and she cracked a slight smile as she took the trousers and pad and picked a dress.

After changing into the more sanitary trousers with a dress over it, she took her time leaving the room to get to the entrance hall.

“Ah, Annie, you’re back sooner than anticipated,” commented Hange. She then gestured towards the two men chatting quietly and cordially with Armin. “That’s Bertholt–” she pointed at a tall, thin man who didn’t seem to be saying much– “And that’s Reiner.” She pointed at a slightly shorter but far brawnier man. “You’ll be helping them.”

Annie took one look at them and felt uneasy. One of them (she was unsure of which) felt familiar to her despite never seeing either of them before. The other had no such sense of familiarity, but rather had an air of instability which she wasn’t sure she trusted. However, she bit her tongue to swallow any harsh commentary she might say to offend them and simply nodded.

“That being said, I assume you need transportation?” Hange asked.

Annie’s mind was jolted back to the present.

As she tried to process the context she had just been told as fast as she could, something clicked in her mind, and she realized that the magician distrusted the two strangers as well and was setting up a trap. If they had horses, then why would it matter to them that their cow had been stolen? If they walked, then it would imply prior knowledge because of how niche the castle was.

Bertholt and Reiner shared an unreadable look that probably lasted a good three seconds.

It was at that moment when Annie questioned whether or not Hange could even provide them with stable transportation: after all, if she could, why didn’t she when she and Armin had to visit Marco, and let Mikasa keep the favor from Jean until a later time?

Fortunately, the seemingly shyer Bertholt shook his head and said, “No, we should be fine. We’ll get there in due time.” Annie heard Hange subtly let out a breath of relief.

“That’s just fine!” she brightly said in a way that frankly did _not_ sound the way she usually did. “I’m sure you’re all strong and fit young’uns who can walk just fine.”

Annie bit the inside of her cheek, put off, as she glanced over at Armin. They exchanged uneasy glances and simultaneously looked to Hange.

“Can we meet you at the gate?” Armin asked, scooting away from the men. “I… uh, need to get something from my bed chambers.” He stole a glance at Reiner, who along with Bertholt, had absolutely no negative reaction.

“Yeah, sure, we can wait at the gate,” Bertl softly said. “Just don’t take too long.”

“Yeah, all right,” Armin said and immediately darted off.

Bertholt and Reiner looked at Annie, then at Hange, then back at Annie. Reiner looked away a split second sooner than Bertholt, and it made her feel uncomfortable and unnerved.

However, before the moment was even over the two turned heel and left the castle to wait at the gate as they promised. Annie didn’t want to follow, since Bertholt frankly creeped her out; she suspected Hange likely wouldn’t have let her go anyway because of how off-kilter the two men acted.

“Hange,” she whispered, watching them walk away, “You’re thinking what I’m thinking about those two strangers, right?”

“Depends on what you’re thinking about, darling,” Hange absently replied, staring suspiciously at the men as well. “I’m personally thinking that this could be the end of something: you know I know they shouldn’t have known about this place. Remember the hypothetical mare or alp nesting on you and serving as a tracking device for the Witch to find you?”

Annie nodded, a little unsure of how Hange knew but too scared to ask at that point.

“The only way you can find this place is through supernatural intervention. That’s just how the initial barrier was set up. And it’s still up; Petra’s death didn’t change that because I’m still able to feed it enough magic to stay up. Anyway, that leaves the only logical explanation for them is they are or are involved in supernatural dabblings.”

“But Hange, magic _is_ illogical.”

“It still has rules, no matter how illogical.” She let out a breath just shy of a sigh. “I’d have to check the map just in order to know for sure what they are, but this is just one of those things where we’ll have to just take the risk because of time constraints.”

Annie understood.

Armin ran through the doors into the castle foyer, panting and clutching the sword now hanging off his belt. “Sorry,” he wheezed, “Forgot to put it on this morning, but Hange.”

The magician in question raised an eyebrow at him in an invitation to continue.

“I checked the map while I was up there, just in case.”

“Oh thank _goodness_. We were just talking about it. What co–”

“It was still on Cursed mode, Hange; you forgot to change it back,” Armin interrupted.

Hange deflated slightly. “Whoops.”

“But there’s nothing in the vicinity of the castle, so therefore–”

“They’re lying,” Annie finished.

Hange tapped her chin, deep in thought. “Unfortunately, we won’t be able to screen any of our hypotheses before you two leave with them, but now I’d say that the alp-mare theory is our best bet.”

The two blonds simultaneously looked up at her. “But what does that make them? There’s no records of the Witch ever having henchmen except for perhaps _Cinderella_ , but I don’t think that counts,” Armin asked.

“I don’t know. If all this is part of a fairy tale, it’s an unrecorded one, and I can’t help you if it is and you kids are its main characters.” She crossed her arms and looked at the ceiling for a few seconds to calm down. “I’m sorry,” she said. “You’ll have to find it all out firsthand for yourselves.” She reached out and put a hand on each blond’s head. “Take care.”

Annie pushed the hand off her head. “We will,” she promised for the both of them.

They walked out the door and over to the gate together.

~***~

Despite supposedly working together for the common goal of getting Bertholt’s cow back, there was a significant divide in the party. Armin and Annie tailed the men several meters back, whispering quietly to each other while still remaining a fair distance apart from each other out of respect for Annie’s personal space. Meanwhile, Bertholt and Reiner seemed to practically hang off each other, they were so close.

Sometimes, Reiner would glance back at them. Annie legitimately couldn’t tell if they were checking out of suspicion or if they were concerned about the falling behind.

“Armin.”

He looked at Annie.

“Do you have a plan in case they are what we think they are?” she asked him in a low voice.

They both slowed down in order to make more distance between themselves and the men leading them.

“Well,” he slowly began. “I think our first move, just in case, would be to make sure they can’t use their heights to an advantage. We’ll have to slip away pretty fast in order to stand any semblance of a chance. But, to be honest, I think we’re pretty safe. Considering their base tale, it wouldn’t be a deathly shock to think that they have had exposure to magic. For all we know, maybe they’re a subversion of the story, and they ate the beans before and absorbed some of the magic in them before the beanstalk grew up out of the outhouse.”

“That does _not_ explain how they found Levi’s castle.”

Armin shrugged and sighed. “I don’t _know_. I may be well-educated, but I’m far from knowing everything.”

Annie decided to guide the topic away from Bertholt and Reiner so that they could catch up to the latter and not fall under suspicion for their conversation.

But before she could say anything, something hit her upside the head. She shrieked, stumbling forward as her skull throbbed in pain. Fighting to keep her mind straight, she staggered around for a few seconds before falling to her knees from the sheer overwhelming nature of the last few seconds. Black spots danced before her eyes as her conscious wavered and threatened to give out on her. Scowling, her eyes darted around and saw Armin, lying unconscious on the ground.

He’d been knocked out in just one hit.

She began to struggle to her feet, but a cloth was thrown roughly over her head, filling her lungs with the sharp smell and taste of a foreign air, and at last, Annie’s body collapsed beneath her will.

The whole world went black.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> sorry this is late-- i had computer issues for a while. but i'm on a roll!!! I assure you there's a thematical reason as to why she's on her period


	30. Run

_ A flower. A flower. How hard could it be to find a blood-red flower with a pearl in the center? Well, only in a place where the trees were made of gold, silver, and bronze, and the flowers were all colors of the rainbow, the water sang so sweetly to the tune of its skipping current, and the light was just a bit too bright, it was. _

_ He scowled, growing frustrated and overstimulated. He expected the magic realm to be a lot darker, a lot darker. He swatted away a sprite and crushed it underfoot, ignoring its horrified, high-pitched screeching. A lot less sprites. _

_ Of course, if he thought about it, a suspicious lack of magical creatures indigenous to the magical realm would have been most concerning, but then again, he wasn’t thinking about it. _

_ He slowed down and sat still for almost a full minute to regain himself. He lost the doe soon after entering fully into this world. He supposed she had run off and disintegrated into the wind. _

_ He sighed, though much calmer now. Staring at the empty ground before him, he wondered what he was expecting. _

_ A sprout popped up before him. Unsure of how to respond, he watched it grow until a single, thin, dark bud appeared on the end of a long stem. He held his breath in hopes of it blooming. _

_ What felt like forever seemed to pass, and he at last ran out of patience and simply reached out to touch the bud. _

_ It felt simultaneously completely normal and altogether overwhelming.  _

_ His innards burned like a lake of fire, but his muscles were as rigid as an arctic glacier. They kept him motionless, from doubling over in pain, and from clawing at the terrible burning in his skin. Everything in front of him was spinning, distorting, and he wasn’t sure if it was from nausea or his transformation. _

_ Yet, despite all the pain he was enduring, some part of him in the back of his mind still felt numb.  _

It’s just a flower, _ he thought.  _ Nothing special.

_ There as half a second of utter silence and harmony before what felt like the entire universe exploded around him. _

_ He was never sure what happened in those moments. _

All he knew when he came to again was that he was back at the castle, right at the maze exit, and that he was no longer a wolf. Instead, he was human again, just as they had anticipated.

He got up, his every muscle burning and screaming in protest as he did so, and, flower in hand, dragged himself out of the maze and into the bathroom again. It was fortunately empty.

The moment he relaxed, he caught a glimpse of himself in the dim mirror that he hadn’t fully noticed when he first reentered the room. But, now that he had the chance, he couldn’t help but stare.

He was a far cry from what he had been before his transformation, but that was natural. He found that the echo of the self he had only seen in his dreams sounded back loud and clear in his new appearance, from extraordinarily bright green eyes, ruffled brown hair in desperate need of grooming, and an overall exhausted expression.

Fortunately and strangely, he was also the clothes he had never questioned appearing in his dreams. He chose not to question them here either, knowing that some things would probably be best left a mystery.

It was a strange feeling to be able to look into the mirror and see, not a wolf grinning back at him, but his own human face. Yet at the same time, it was also familiar. His eyes, it seemed, had remained of the same spirit as when he had been a wolf, or when he had been but a mouthy tween all those years ago.

The image in the mirror started to blur. Confused, he reached up to touch his face and felt something wet.

He was crying, and at first he wasn’t sure why, but thus he stopped crying and was filled with such an overwhelming relief it was again hard  _ not _ to cry.

He was human. He really, truly  _ was _ human, for real, not once upon a dream, and not just inside.

He blinked, blurring his vision even more, when the last thought came to him. He supposed Ymir’s words had been eating away at him even more than he had previously realized.

_ No matter, _ he thought as he dried his eyes. He had important things to do.

He walked out, the pearl flower clutched tight in his right hand, pins and needles prickling irritatingly into his legs and feet every time they moved as though they had been asleep for a long, long time.

He grit his teeth and ignored it, however, and he made his way over to they foyer.

No one was there.

He staggered over to the staircase and leaned heavily against it. He was surprisingly weak from the transformation.

“Hange!” he yelled, his voice, harsh and throaty, the only sound ringing through the silence.

A soft series of soft and steady footsteps faded into hearing. He quickly turned in the direction of the sound, and much soon her than he anticipated, a now clean Ymir stumbled in. She squinted, likely because her sight was still poor, but the moment she recognized him, her face twisted into a half-grin.

“Is that you, Fuzzy?” she called, speeding up to meet him. She gave him a solid punch to the shoulder as though testing how solid he was.

“Ouch,” he yelped, starting in surprise, but he grinned as he rubbed the place where she hit him. Ymir laughed.

“You’ve got the same eyes,” she told him.

“Told you I was human,” he told her rather smugly.

“That you are.”

“Anyway, Hange’s… here, right? I should let her know I came back alive before I leave again.

Ymir gestured up the stairs. “She’s in the map room, observing the dots and trying to invent a command that will make it show again what it did when you were rescuing Historia and I.”

“Historia?”

“Oh, right. You were gone a couple days there; I forgot. 

“Christa’s real name is Historia, Princess of the Sinan Kingdoms. Her voice came back enough that she told everyone what happened to her. Stuff about being a bastard child and being hidden away for appearances and the good of the political scene. Kind of confusing, too lazy to explain it all to you now. Important crap like that. But, thanks to Levi, we’ve recently been plotting to get the throne back from old King Rod and restore truth and justice to the land,” she explained.

“Why does Levi care?” he cut in, both to clarify and give himself enough time to process this new info dump.

“This castle’s on Sinan lands. So I guess he wants some kind of say in who’s in power. I don’t really know; it’s none of my concern.” She paused, and her grin turned sappy. “Historia wants to adopt a bunch of orphans so that they’ll never know the terrible loneliness she suffered. Kids aren’t really my thing, but you wanna know something, Fuzzy?”

“...What?”

Ymir threw her head back and cackled but not in the evil way. “She said she’d marry me when she takes the throne!” she crowed. She continued laughing for some time, probably out of sheer disbelief and genuine happiness. He watched her joy run its course before she sighed in contentment. She ruffled his hair. “You should get going, Fuzzy.”

He nodded. “Not so fuzzy anymore, though.”

“That’s right, kiddo.”

Knowing he’d never get her to call him by his real name, he hobbled up the stairs until he reached the map room. He knocked on the door.

“It’s unlocked,” Hange called from inside.

He walked into the room to see the entire flood had been rearranged into a form of utter chaos rather than mere disorganization. Hange glanced over at him with tired eyes, and, for a second, didn’t recognize him.

“You’re back,” she said, and rather blankly, too. She abruptly turned back to the map. “You’re not showing up on the map anymore.” She gasped, seeming to come back to life again, and lurched forward, pushing him to sit down on the nearest surface: a table covered in stacks of books.

“How are you feeling? How much time do you think has passed? What are some physical side effects that you ha– wait, no, that’s the same as ‘How are you feeling’...” She trailed off.

“I’m feeling fine, I guess,” he slowly began. “Kind of feels like all my limbs fell asleep for a few days. It feels like just a couple hours  _ at most _ have passed.”

“Do you still have the flower?”

“Uhh…” he opened up his hand to reveal the crushed and slightly wilted red blossom to Hange.

She glanced at it for a split second. “Your muscles must be adjusting from lack of use. Don’t worry about it; they’ll probably be fine in no time.” She wandered over a few meters and picked up a book from one of the cluttered tables. “I was doing some research between experiments, and you know this might be an ancient power that you’re dealing with. There seem to be recordings of a powerful magical entity wandering the land for as long as a hundred years. In fact, it seems that this magical entity has held a hefty influence in our culture and legends for most of that time, likely being the sole origin of a few of the more recent fairy tales while drawing significant inspiration from older ones, reenacting them by casting curses over people.”

“So… what are you saying?”

She sighed. “Just to be careful. Anyway, I think I’ve been able to at least partially track down Mikasa with the map.”

He brightened visibly.

Hange touched the map and muttered something incoherent. The blinking maroon dots rapidly reversed themselves, then slowed down to their regular speed but in a new– well, it would probably be better to say  _ old _ – location. She pointed at the castle where they had found Chr– Historia, where one red dot sputtered out of existence “That’s the Curse being removed from Historia, the one that made her mute,” she explained. Just a moment later, a new one flickered into existence before zipping away and vanishing in the general vicinity of the nearby town of Lasanin. “Logically speaking, that would be Mikasa, and she probably disappeared from the map because of some sheltering barrier or shield keeping her and the Witch from from showing up.”

“So that’s where she is? Lasanin?”

“Most likely, yes.” Hange removed her hand, and all the dots fast-forwarded back to the present. “We can’t necessarily say for s _ ure _ , but it’s a good place to start. And, if she’s not there, there  _ were _ these suspicious men who were here yesterday morning. They might have been henchmen or something, so the next place to look for her would be here at this beanstalk.” She scanned the map for a moment before pointing at a very tall plant on the map in the exact opposite direction of the town. “There should be a castle in the clouds above it.”

He nodded. “Lasanin first, then if she’s not there, I got to the beanstalk?”

“Yeah, but don’t spend the night in the town. There’s a possible reason why the dots vanish around there: it’s a play on a word, lasanin, meaning to go backwards. I’m not saying it’s a permanent reversal of magic, but I’m just going to warn you now. Plus, the flower is temporary; we’re racing against time.”

“Gotcha.” He turned to leave.

“Wait.” He did so. “Take Ymir and Historia’s horse. It’ll be faster. And, it’s dangerous to go alone: take this.” She dug around in her mess for a second, pulled out a sheathed longsword, and handed it to him. 

“Thank you,” he said softly, and he meant it. A good weapon would be invaluable if the only way he knew to defeat the Witch was to kill him. He looped the sheath through the belt and spent a few second marvelling at how natural the weight felt at his side. “ _ Thank _ you,” he repeated, again with incredible awe, and turned to leave again.

“You’re welcome,” Hange returned. “And one more thing.”

“Yes?”

“Good luck, Eren.”

~***~

Mikasa was nowhere to be found in Lasanin.

The sun had begun to set when he was riding away, notifying him that he had used up a good ten or eleven hours since leaving Hange’s castle. He had, at most, thirteen left.

Eren ground his teeth, fighting the tail end of a wave of nausea that had overcome him as the sun was going down just when they were reaching the outskirts of the town. Hange must have been right: the town likely  _ was _ capable of vicissitating spells and enchantments.

He dug his hands into the sides of the house, urging it to gallop for as long as it could. The cooling air at dusk buffeted his face, whipping his hair into his face and eyes. His still fingers clutched the horse’s long, coarse, tangled mane, and he wondered if he’d be able to jump off fast enough when they got there.

He shook his head to clear his vision of his hair and looked up at the horizon. A waxing gibbous moon rose slowly from afar. He cursed; the full moon was approaching. While the Witch wouldn’t be at  _ full _ power, he certainly would have a significant ability should they fight when the moon was out.

Eren found himself suddenly jerked upwards. He cried out harshly as the horse landed roughly on the other side of a rivulet. It suddenly skidded to a stop and let out a harsh whinny itself. Looking wildly around him, a flash of silver caught his eye: standing before him once more was the silver doe.

His fearful expression fell away and sheer relief overwhelmed him. He laughed aloud. He gave the still nervous horse a few calming strokes so that it settled and when the doe leapt away, he urged the horse to follow her.

She was as difficult as ever to tail, even if he was riding a horse this time, but he caught bright glimpses of her shining in the dark, and they kept him on track.

They reached the thick, green, wooden base of the beanstalk, where Eren and the horse caught up to the ever-patient silver doe. He untangled his fingers from the horse’s hair and slid off, giving it a few pats on the nuzzle. He had no choice but to trust it to remain there until he returned.

The doe stared at him, then walked halfway round the base of the stalk and vanished. Eren followed her and discovered a door cleverly hidden by the plant’s enormous leaves on the other side.

Finding it unlocked, he opened the door and discovered a dark spiral staircase occupying the center hollow of the stem. He stepped inside and started walking. If the door had shut behind him, he would have been none the wiser because of the complete and utter pitch black that surrounded him, a black so dark he doubted he’d be able to see his own hand in front of his face.

No matter. He kept walking, putting one foot before another, over and over again. Right. Left. Right. Left.

The silence in the plant was otherworldly.

Right. Left. Right. Left.

The only noise that echoed through the hollow plant came in pulses.

Right. Left.  Right. Left.

Were they his footsteps?

Right.

He listened more closely, his climbing pace never wavering.

Left.

Right, left, right, left, right left.

The paces began to all run together in his mind, echoing…

...echoing…

...echoing throughout.

Right left right, left, right. Left.

Right.

The only thing ringing now was his head. The rushing, whooshing, steady and rhythmic beat of his heart whispered softly in his ear:

“ _ Six hours left, six hours left, six hours left. _ ”

Fairy time was _ messed up _ .

Left.

Keep moving forward.

Right. Left.

He had nothing left to lose but his own damned heartbeat, and even that was of questionable ownership status at this point.

Right. Left. Right. Left.

He felt something tugging at his heartstrings, calling him to do something.

Right, left, right, left.

He reached out to touch the wall.

Right left right left

Something. Something, something,  _ something _ was  _ calling _ to him, this  _ overwhelming _

_ right left right left _

_ urge _

_ RIGHT LEFT RIGHT _

_ to _

_ LEFTRI _

**Scream.**

**_GHT._ **

A great cry rose up within him,

LEF

starting in his gut,

TRIGH

then transforming into a growl in his throat,

TL

before bursting out as a great,

EF

bellowing

T

_ war _ cry,

RIGHT LEFT RIGHT LEFT RIGHT LEFT

piercing through the dark.

_ RIGHTLEFTRIGHTLEFT _

He screamed as he had never recalled doing so before, then hit the wall before him full force. It toppled forward, and, temporarily blinded by the sudden flooding of light (even the mere pale shining rays of the moon hurt his eyes), he forced himself to slow down.

He blinked rapidly to allow his vision to adjust, and soon enough, he could adequately see again. The moment he regained his sight, his heart skipped a beat out of awe and terror, for towering before him was a  _ gigantic _ castle that really made him feel like he was the size of a wolf again.

He feared. Feared what, he did not know but his instincts were telling him something, and that’s what scared him.

A wave of serenity washed over him, making him feel renewed. Brave again. He could do this, just as he had done in the past with Mikasa at his side.

He took a step toward the castle.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> tfw you accidentally make a meaningful name.  
> lasanin is an anagram of annalis, which is latin for history/chronicle. that was on purpose.  
> lisanin being just one letter off and meaning to go back. now that was an accident.  
> what else i got for y'all. aside from weird meta stuff involving no one using eren's name until the end of the first half that i completely forgot that's it.  
> leave a comment!!!!!!!!! or something. kudos are nice too. neither of these things are necessary but they make me feel good.  
> have a great day!!!!!!!!!!!!!


	31. Unspeakable

Armin’s head was throbbing painfully. His mind was murky, his thoughts were sluggish, and he was overall functioning at a much lower capacity than what he was used to or had ever thought possible.

Actually, scratch that last one. He was functioning so poorly that he couldn’t even process how poorly he was functioning.

All he wanted to do at the moment was to curl up and fall fast asleep, but the insistent pulsing of his brain  _ annoyingly _ refused to give him even the sweet embrace of dreamland.

So rather unwillingly, the blond boy cracked his eyes open. He assumed. He couldn’t quite tell; everything seemed just as dark as it had been with them closed. He opened them all the way and sat up, finding the world still completely void.

_ Oh, my God. I’ve gone blind, _ was his first thought. 

Fortunately, he didn’t act on his first instinct because that would have been  _ screaming _ . And the only reason he didn’t do that was because a single, small flame came to light in the distance, dimly illuminating everything in its vicinity. Despite being such a small light, Armin found it hard to look directly at it, almost as if it were the sun itself. He shielded his eyes so that he could look in its direction.

The small flame leapt onto something else, then extinguished. For a moment, the second fire grew closer, and that’s all the reason as to why Armin thought it also grew bigger. But an instant later, it seemed to explode without a sound, though after it began to crackle and snap, merrily like a fire. It made him flinch, then just jumpy, but he adjusted to it soon enough. 

Footsteps came with the new, bigger fire. A torch, he realized in due time. Someone was going to check on him. It was in all likelihood a visit a while overdue, as dryly highlighted by his stomach rumbling softly as if on cue.

Some irrational part of him feared it was just a ghost, or a wisp, come to prey on his innocent hunger into following it, because of how silently the bobbing light moved. Fortunately, that notion was soon dispelled when he stopped his own silly worries and listened, and, lo and behold, there were footsteps coming toward him.

He fell back onto his back full of relief.

“Armin, you said your name was?” The voice was only vaguely familiar, and while his head was clearing, the blond boy couldn’t quite place the owner of the voice to whom he was talking to.

“Yeah,” he replied anyway, surprised that his throat was dry and sore and his voice hoarse and crackly. He pulled himself back up into a sitting position and found himself face-to-face with the burly blond stranger from before. He blinked in surprise, wanting to instinctively back away from a man so much stronger than he. “Reiner?”

The other man nodded and lowered the torch into a neat little hole in the floor likely designed for that purpose.

Huh.  _ Reiner’s here with me… it’s dark and lit only by torches… so we’re in a dungeon.  _ Armin strained his memory. They were walking in the woods, himself, Annie, Reiner, and that other man, Bertholt. 

That’s it. That’s where the memory cut off. 

He frowned. Well, if–

“Hey, Armin, are you going to eat at all? I got you something.” Reiner slid a clay tray with a loaf of flatbread, a glass of water, and a plate of boiled vegetables on it towards him. Without a word, the smaller boy pulled it toward himself, picked up the bread, and began nibbling on it.

If there was a distinct time gap between that conversation in the woods and where they currently were (likely in a dungeon), then that meant he had to have been knocked unconscious for that journey. 

The breadcrumbs were turning to sweet mush in his mouth. He swallowed. He eyed Reiner, who seemed to be equally silently absorbing his every move, very cautiously.

And if Reiner had had the torch, and had had the food, then that meant that he had had  _ not _ to be another prisoner in what was most likely  _ not _ the same dungeon as he. In fact, more likely was that the other man was just helping whoever was holding him here.

“You eat very slowly,” Reiner commented.

Armin said nothing, choosing instead to simply nod. It would be rude to speak with his mouth full.

The only people he and Annie had been with when his memory cut out had been Bertholt and Reiner. And if the latter was not a fellow prisoner… 

He swallowed again. “What happened to you?” he asked, careful not to set off a potential alarm with asking about all he wanted to confirm directly and right off the bat.

“The trees had too much pollen. Bertl caught hay fever, and in his temporary blindness, ran into a tree branch, which landed on you. We had to get you somewhere to rest and recover in the dark, so we went off trail and found this cave. It’s night now, but we should be able to set off again at dawn.” It was delivered perfectly, and perhaps Armin would have believed it too if his mind had still been in a tizzy.

It seemed to have its merit: judging by the cold and dank atmosphere, it definitely could be a cave if not a dungeon. That part could be true enough, Armin knew. 

But he also knew that he had been walking far enough behind the two men that there was  _ no _ way that a branch could have fallen on his head if  _ Bertholt _ had  _ just _ run into it. That part had to have been a lie. 

As for the pollen and hayfever, they were just meaningless details to flesh out the story and distract him. He tossed out even the notion that they would be relevant to him.

And, wouldn’t Bertholt be unconscious with him as well, if he had hit his head on a branch so hard that he had broken it off,  _ and _ it got thrown back so far so as to  _ also _ knock him out? 

“And what of Annie?” he wondered aloud the second he finished his bread. He genuinely missed the quiet, cynical presence being ever-present at his side and was concerned for her safety.

“She got restless and went out for a walk a while ago.”

“By  _ herself _ ? When?” His voice was an octave above his regular pitch as his cool and controlling façade slipped out of worry. “Didn’t you say we went off trail? How’s she going to get back if it’s dark  _ and _ in the middle of nowhere?”

“Calm down, buddy. She went out over two hours ago. Bertholt went looking for her after about an hour. They should be back soon.”

As if Annie would ever come back with a stranger if she could help it. She was far too full of pride and independence, and he could tell she  _ hated _ being alone with someone she wasn’t familiar with. Armin frankly couldn’t see Bertholt returning in one piece if  _ that _ was true. But wait… 

“How’s  _ he _ going to know how to get back?”

Reiner actually hesitated at this, as though unsure how to answer. “We’re familiar with the area,” he soon said, however. “Our village isn’t that far from here.”

“How far off-trail  _ are _ we, then?” Armin wasn’t so much grilling the man now as he was genuinely curious. It had seemed that the village was a fair distance away and would take more than just a morning to get there by foot. “You said that it would be a while until we got there, but yr story made it seem like I got knocked out, and then you immediately brought me off the path to find this cave.”

“Well, you see… the path itself is a bit of a large horseshoe pattern… But we don’t like going through that neck of the woods because of a hidden ravine. If you don’t know where it is exactly, you could easily stumble into it and die when you fall in.”

Now their logic was just confusing him, true or not. “How do you expect to get familiar with an area, and by extension with the location of this hidden ravine, if no one ever goes there?”

“...We don’t.”

“So you guys just take the long route every time?!” Was their entire village  _ stupid _ ? ? ?

“Yuuup.”

It really seemed so. Armin had never wanted to slap his own forehead more. “Wait, but then, if you guys never come here, how would Bertholt know the area?” Check and mate.

“We made it through that bottleneck and back onto the path again.”

Oh. Whoops. He had miscalculated that one. “So, we’re  _ not _ off the path?”

“We’re off the path still.”

“YOU WENT OFF PATH  _ AGAIN _ ?” Armin tried not to yell. He really, truly did. But the ridiculous of the entire situation seemed to call for it that it just happened.

“Well, we still needed to rest.”

“Why not your  _ village _ ?”

“It was getting dark.”

In frustration (and to keep himself from screaming), Armin shoved the entire bowl of boiled greens into his mouth. They were stone cold, but that just brought up the question of how they got boiled in the first place. And where all the silverware and dishes had come from. And the tray. 

Armin swallowed the overcooked, green wad somewhat painfully and buried his face in his hand. “I just… have too many questions,” he lamented.

An abrupt crash, followed up by a deafening boom, suddenly sounded clearly through the air. Both blonds’ heads shot up at attention, the smaller one nearly choking in surprise, completely caught off guard. And it wasn’t as though it was followed up by immediate silence, either: in fact, if his ears hadn’t been ringing so loudly into his brain, Armin would have been overwhelmed by the sheer cacophony that followed made of what was probably  _ thousands _ of birds screeching all at once.

He tried to yell something to Reiner, but he couldn’t hear himself. The ringing was fading, but his hearing was not returning. His throat was vibrating, but if he hadn’t felt it, he never would have known he was talking, let alone yelling. The other man didn’t seem to comprehend what he was trying to say, instead choosing to stare blankly in the direction that he had arrived from.

The torch’s unreliable light was fading. Terrified of being lost in both the dark and silence, Armin scrambled to his feet and tried to run for freedom as fast as his legs could take him.

A strong hand grabbed his fragile arm before he could get far, however, and Armin nearly yanked his own arm out of its socket from the sheer suddenness of the stop he was forced to make. He twisted his neck to see what was going on and saw the equal parts of confusion and fright etched onto Reiner’s face.

With no room for sympathy and an instinctive desire to be free from both the confines of the mystery prison/cave and the muscled man’s grip, Armin snatched the clay bowl off the floor and, adrenaline buzzing through his every muscle, hit Reiner smack dab on the skull with it, shattering the bowl on impact. He felt a brief sting on his cheek, but he was so full of adrenaline and terror he soon forgot it and began sprinting like mad into the dark.

For several horrifying seconds, he was alone, blind, and deaf as he ran.

But right when he felt his heart ceased beating out of fear, he heard his own dim footsteps in his ears. 

A crashing ocean of relief swept over him, drowning him in the overwhelming disbelieving  _ relief _ that it brought him to the point where his knee buckled when he took his next step and causing him to stumble. The fear came jolting back to him in an instant, and despite feeling the exhaustion from the sheer effort he felt he was exherting, the adrenaline dragged his legs, feeling as though they were weighed down by lead, in a running cycle that he just couldn’t stop.

The light began to return to him as well; a pale, bluish-white light was before him, coming closer, closer, closer as he barrelled towards it and crashed very painfully into a metal bar, unable to stop because of how his legs were already churning.

“ _ FUCK _ ,” he screamed aloud for the first time in his life, then, out of sheer surprise, his hands flew to his lips in utter horror at what he had just said. When he pulled them away just a second later, a fresh crimson smear was on them. 

Outside the bars was an empty hall with an open window right in front of him, allowing him to see out into the starry, midnight blue world with blurry eyes. He swore again, this time in his mind, and, ignoring everything for the sake of adrenaline, squeezed out from between the bars that held him inside the dungeon (he  _ knew _ there had been absolutely  _ no _ way Reiner’s plot holed story could have been true), and began to run not knowing what lay in store for him.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i farted most of this out in one night and it was great.  
> also this is the first time anyone in this fic has said a swear word... on purpose. levi said shit accidentally once but that just slipped out.  
> anyway hope you enjoyed this fic feel free to comment or kudo or subscribe or whatever, and as always have a greaaaat daaaay~


	32. Impulse

Did birds  _ ever _ sleep?

This was the question that had crossed Mikasa’s mind the most frequently in the last roughly twenty-four hours.

She knew  _ she _ sure couldn’t, but that might have been because of all the birds surrounding her screeching their little pea brains out. 

It was  _ awful _ . Absolutely  _ awful _ .

To some degree, she considered smashing all their little skulls in as means of silencing them, but she had neither the muscle nor the means to do that at the moment. 

_ Besides _ , she chided herself,  _ killing them just because they’re being annoying is just far too rash. It’s something Eren would have done.  _ She glanced around the room as though looking for him.  _ I can’t believe I would have just run out and killed ten thousand birds just to get a few seconds of satisfaction. _

Yet strangely, in the last day she had  _ lived _ for instant gratification, giving in to almost every whim that crossed her mind, which was more than likely to be the cause of her being trapped in the cage she currently found herself cooped up in.

She sighed, eyeing the thin, golden bars wearily. There was only one way of escape, through a gap in the wires up above, but she didn’t want to even  _ think _ about that without some sort of reasonably thought out plan.

Out of herself and Eren, the latter had been the risk-taker in the relationship, chasing after whatever caught his attention at the time without thinking through to any of the consequences and, more often than not, ended up dragging the other along with him in case he goofed up. 

She, on the other hand, liked to take everything on the safe side, even though it might take more time, unless it involved some sort of immediate danger to either of them.

She didn’t classify this as immediate danger. For the most part, in fact, she was safe and dry. There was no expectation that danger would come any time soon.

But how  _ restless _ she was! Her muscles longed to move, to be out, to be free from this cage she was in. And how  _ unfamiliar _ this desire was! As innate as it seemed, she had never felt this strongly about being free before, always perfectly content to play the long game. She had always had the patience to wait until now.

But her only other choice at the moment was to wait for Eren, and who knew how long it would take for  _ that _ to happen. She just couldn’t fathom the idea of being stuck for any longer than she had already been, particularly in the form she was in now. Everything about it just screamed for freedom, both from the cage and from the form. She was now  _ built _ to go free.

Eren would come for her, she told herself. Everything would return to normal when he did. They’d kill the Witch together, escape the castle on a cloud, and live happily forever afterward.

She may have been patient in the past, but never had she ever been a pansy who waited around to get saved by someone else.

She let out a strangled cry and banged her skull against the bars, as though doing that would allow her to squeeze out. In actuality it did nothing to further her goals, but the shocks of pain and the motions did help alleviate her frustration.

She sighed and settled again, lifting her sights towards the rounded top of the cage and its one deformity that would allow her to escape. It was her second most common thought of the time being, that gap. It called to her and irritated her to no end.

Her strange hyperfixation on the one flaw in her prison was broken with the air: an earth-shattering  _ crash  _ split through the birds’ eternal screeching, shattering the controlled chaos atmosphere and replacing it with one of pure and utter  _ cacophony _ . Cacophony that was only intensified by the even more jarring boom of thunder that followed just moments after.

Shaken, but still focused, she threw away her entire thought process holding her back and took her chances.

She fled.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> yup that's it sorry it's so short


	33. Breathe

“I-I’m telling you, it’s true!”

She had long tuned out Bertholt, desperate to convince her that she had two living children, twins; that they were seven years old; and that they were living in the castle at that very moment under the care of himself, Reiner, and the Witch Zeke.

A trickle of blood ran down her leg, for the cotton pad given to her by Hange had long soaked through. She knew what a load of bologna Bertholt’s words were. He stuttered while delivering his lines, he could never look her in the eye (though that might have perhaps been a consequence of her deathly and apathetic default glare), and he was sweating buckets. 

Besides, even if he  _ weren’t _ obviously feeding her falsehoods, she had long figured out that it was impossible for her to have kids while in her coma. If she were on her period now, then that meant she had not reached the number when it would stop. From what she knew, pregnancy could not exist without a period. No period meant no pregnancy. Everything he was trying to tell her was nothing less than a complete and utter lie easily demolished by logic.

“Of course, Bertholt,” she icily replied for the first time in ages. “And the Pope is an Anglican.” 

She couldn’t have been more sarcastic if she had a brick of it and threw it in his face. She was growing tired of his pitiful attempts at scaring her. She leaned against the stone wall and stared out the barred window at the sky whose colors were gradually changing from an inky black to a midnight blue. The silver stars were fading from sight; dawn was approaching.

She side-eyed Bertholt, who was sweating, then faced her entire body toward him. Her arms were crossed with a thinly veiled hostility; she pushed herself off the wall. She reached into her bag, which she miraculously kept, and pulled out the potion Marco had given her. 

She drank it all in a single gulp, and a sharp crack split the air when she took her first threatening step. Annie herself didn’t flinch, but Bertholt practically leapt up into the air in shock. Her next step came with a deafening boom of what was almost thunder, and while no other sound effects came with them, her paces soon transformed into a full-on sprint towards the metal bars separating her from her guard. She allowed her blank mask of calm slip away, revealing a face full of anger, as she stopped just short of the bars and socked Bertholt through them and square in his chest.

All the air left his lungs with an audible wheeze, and he collapsed, but not before Annie reached through the bars and grabbed his shirt just long enough so that she could swipe his key ring. Unlocking her prison, she pocketed the keys and glared down at the pathetic, sweaty man who thought he could break her with lies.

For half a moment, she contemplated ending him right then and there. 

In the end, she merely “tch”ed, tossed his keys back onto his curled-up body, and walked away, leaving faint spots of blood on the floor she passed over. She’d have to find a privy soon, but at the very least, no one would ever dare mess with someone who left a trail of blood in their wake.

~***~

Having just finished cleaning herself up in a swiftly found privy, Annie found herself lost in the halls of the castle. For the most part, it was all right; she was, at the very least, away from anyone who might be on the side of the Witch. However, the number of  _ birds _ that she encountered in the halls was  _ astounding _ , considering the fact that most birds couldn’t have even  _ dreamed _ of being as high in the sky as the castle she was located in at the moment.

Their screeching and flapping and overall discombobulation irritated her to no end, likely made even worse by the fact that it was just barely dawn, when the most birds were screeching and flapping and overall discombobulated. 

“Where are they  _ coming _ from?” she muttered to herself as she rounded a corner and crashed into somebody.

She let out a shriek of shock (as did whoever she crashed into), and she took two steps back before adjusting her posture so as to better defend herself.

“Relax, Annie, it’s just me,” a comfortingly familiar voice told her. 

Lowering her hands and opening her eyes so as to get a better look, she saw a shock of blond hair and a pair of blue eyes and knew in that moment that it was only Armin. She relaxed.

“I’m letting out all the birds I can find,” he explained, briefly brushing the dust off his clothes before hastily continuing straight down the hallway.

_ Ah. So that explains the source of the birds. _ Annie began to follow him.

“I escaped from Reiner, so I’m hoping that by crowding the place with freed birds he’ll get slowed down at the very least, and then we’ll have a chance to escape on our own.”

“How would we get down? Have you seen how high up we are?” she asked him, gesturing very obviously toward anything that would allow him to see the sky. “Look out a window, Armin; I have. We’re in a castle  _ on a cloud _ . We can’t exactly jump down.”

“Are we?” He skidded to a stop and made a beeline for the nearest window, poking his head out and glancing around. 

His face was paler than usual when he brought it back inside, and he looked as if he rather regretted being so enthusiastic about looking outside. “I only saw the sky earlier and just assumed we were on ground level because of how cave-like my cell had been.”

“Well, you know what they say about assumptions,” replied Annie dryly. “They make an ass out of you* and me.”

Armin laughed. “No, I didn’t know they said that. But anyway, you’ll help me free the birds, right? If they had me locked up, they probably locked you up, too, and you’re getting away now.”

“No, I just run around strange castles that have people I don’t like in them,” Annie sarcastically remarked.

She got an amused snort for that.

They stopped in front of a set of grand double doors that held a great screeching and chirping behind it. It was clear to tell that when they opened those doors to walk in and free the birds, the noise might be overwhelming, perhaps even painful.

She knew she’d be able to get past whatever Bertholt might throw at her with her own strength. Armin, however, was soft and squishy; she doubted he’d be able to get away with neither a weapon nor a distraction to help him.

He’d helped her many times in their short while of knowing one another, and it was in that moment that she made her decision to help him no matter what was thrown their way in the castle on a cloud.

She glanced at him and nodded, and together they pushed the grand double doors open and walked into the screeching pandemonium that was the castle aviary.

Armin immediately jumped into action, unhooking the loops that locked the majority of the cages and throwing the thinly barred doors open for the birds to flock out, but Annie took a second to recover herself. There was so much going on, and the birds that fluttered past her often grazed her face with the tips of their wings and made her feel uncomfortable.

She found herself unable to breathe; the entire atmosphere of the room created such a suffocating pressure that she couldn’t escape. It was almost as if she were falling underwater into a coma again, drowning in thin air.

Out of her muddled, panicking thoughts came a single clear one:  _ you are not the girl who fell into a coma _ , something whispered to her. 

It was as if she broke the surface of a lake after an extraordinary long time underwater. Her breath came back to her, and she could breathe easily again. Her vision cleared up, although she hadn’t known it was fading in the first place, and the energy returned to her. Catching a glimpse of Armin running to the right to free the birds there, she took to her left and flung open the cage doors as fast as she could so that they may be free like her. 

The wings of countless birds flew past her cheeks, filling her with the desire to keep moving forward.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> c:


	34. With Me

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> eren finally confronts the witch in this final chapter before the epilogue

When Eren crashed through the door leading into the castle, it was answered by a deafening boom of thunder. The ceiling itself crackled with energy, as though something were to strike him down at any second should he continue forward. He was breathing heavily, suddenly completely exhausted from all the energy he had put into getting to where he was. 

The castle itself sounded like the depths of hell, full of screeches of terror and possibly pain. The fluttering of wings could have been mistaken for demonic if it hadn’t been for a few scattered feathers softly floating to the ground before him.

He wiped the sweat off his brow and glared up at the ceiling of the grand entrance hall. It seemed to glare back, telling him not to take a single step forward or else he would regret it dearly. He caught his breath and without breaking gaze, he stepped forward and into the castle.

Just as threatened, a bolt of lightning struck the ground in the center of the hall, temporarily blinding him, though it didn’t seem to make as huge of an impact on the entropy of the castle this time; perhaps it had reached maximum chaos with the crash of thunder. Either way, it was none of his concern as it was hectic as it was.

He squinted at where the lightning had touched down. Out of the smoke that rose up from the spot, a figure seemed to precipitate. Eren shielded his eyes and squinted, for the smoke was gently wafting in his direction and stinging his eyes.

The figure didn’t seem to become wholly  _ there _ , but already it was approaching. Eren prepared to draw his sword.

“...Come here,” a low but deep, gravelly voice commanded.

That really just made Eren want to back away, but that would have meant leaving, so instead, he took a step to the side and pressed himself against the wall, never breaking eye contact with the strange, swirling figure of wind and smoke before him. 

The one of the glowing eyes of the figure visibly brightened before dimming back to normal. The breeze inside the room picked up, becoming a ferocious gust of wind and nearly sweeping Eren off his feet as it blew in circles around the figure, making it tangible. 

The wind died down again, making the air perfectly still. For a few perfect seconds, it seemed as though the only noise in the world had died out.

“Dear boy, you should know by now you cannot escape me,” the Witch chided. The second he did so, the twittering voices of the birds came back one by one.

Now  _ that _ ticked Eren off. What made this man think he was all that? Looking down upon him with pitying eyes, calling him silly, calling him a  _ boy _ . He scowled, taking a daring step forward as though to challenge him. His sword was still sheathed, but he was fully prepared to change that should the moment call for it.

“Who  _ are _ you?” he found himself yelling through the bird calls. Some of them had made their way down to the grand entrance hall (that was strange) and were perched on some of the various ledges, watching the face-off with bright, curious eyes.

The Witch folded his arms across his chest. The hem of his robe swayed strangely at his feet, almost as if a breeze was purposely being called on to blow on it to make him look cooler and more powerful. “I am the wind blowing through your hair,” came the cryptic answer.

“Tell me.”

“I am the shadow of the moon at night.”

“ _ Tell me _ .”

“I am the monster underneath your stair.”

“ _ TELL ME _ .”

“I’m afraid, brother dear, if I tell you, you’d not be able to kill me.” He flashed a bittersweet smile, and the wind beneath his feet picked up a bit, fluttering the long, hanging sleeves of his cloak as well as the hem.

Eren nearly found himself demanding to be told for the fourth time in an even louder voice before he realized the reveal had already happened, ever so casually, in the previous sentence.

“And if you don’t kill me, then I’m afraid you’ll never be free of the curse our father has passed down to us.”

Eren’s entire thought process in that moment was a series of dozens of hundreds of question marks zipping through his head with the occasional exclamation point added in for extra surprise and shock.

The birds cheered on, adding to to the overall noise, but everything in the world strangely seemed to slow down just a tad. Eren’s hearing seemed to fade into a dull background clamor; the only thing he could hear clearly above it all was the pounding of his blood in his ears. His sense of touch seemed to die next, replaced by a numb sensation. Even the wind swirling around the room didn’t seem to be able to touch him any longer. He felt to some degree as though his soul was departing his body. He had no control over it when he found he couldn’t move his own limbs; it was as if he were merely a mind trapped in an unmoving object.

But if he was anything, he was willful. As long has he was mindful, he could work with whatever was thrown his way.

He shattered the apparent spell cast upon him (either by the Witch or inadvertently by himself); his mind crashed back into the head attached quite firmly to his shoulders, and faster than he himself could realize, drew his sword from its sheath at his side and went running at the man calling himself his brother.

The man flickered as the sword tried to slash him, making it pass through as easily as if it were made of mere air. Eren also passed through him, coming out the other side at a too-high velocity and crashing to the floor. His sword clattered to the ground; while neither broken nor bent, it was far beyond his reach now.

Though he couldn’t see him properly from his position on the floor, the Witch was giving him the most pitying expression as he approached.

He looked up to see it and scowled. 

“Do you understand why I do what I must do?” the Witch said sadly. “To cast spells on the innocent so that they may live in suffering for a while?”

“No. I don’t.”

The Witch waved his hand in the air, the world melted away, and his now disembodied voice said: “ _ Will you see now? _ ”

At first what he saw were mere flashes flying by far too fast to be able to be seen properly. But then one of the visions dancing before him consumed him, placing him within its disturbingly familiar world of grey.

Familiar, yet also drastically different.

It was the cabin of gore he had dreamt of just a few nights prior, and it gave him chills. He was alone with the exception of the indistinct, coal-black figure of smoke hunched over the carved out corpse on the floor. It raised what appeared to be its head, tearing and grinding a blood-soaked lung to bits in its glistening, white teeth. It slowed for a second, seemingly spotting Eren, then swallowed and slowly broke into a terrifying, toothy grin. 

“ _ Come… here, _ ” it rasped. Its hoarse and broken voice horrified Eren, giving him chills down to his bones, but almost against his will, he took a step forward. Then another, and another until he was less than two meters from the thing.

Time seemed to stand still. The only thing marking its passage was the steady  _ drip-drip _ of blood from the creature’s jaws onto the floor. 

It violently lurched forward, latching itself onto Eren’s arm. Eren himself let out a bloodcurdling scream, yet his own seemed to be intermixed with another, younger voice that was definitely not his own. He struggled to get away, to run and run after the girl from his dream that he remembered telling to run away herself. 

Yet the grip he was caught in was unbreakable, and he was trapped. His heart was pounding out of fear, pounding so swiftly that it may as well have been a singular buzz in his chest. His muscles yearned to move and run as fast as they possibly could, and his mind was flooded with the buzzing chaos of adrenaline. He threw a single, fearful glance back at the creature, and suddenly the thing had a syringe of fluid, its green tint standing in stark contrast to the blacks, whites, and greys of this world. 

“ _ Don’t… worry, _ ” the creature said to him, gradually gaining form. 

Of course, coming from what appeared to be an actual  _ demon _ , it did nothing to soothe Eren’s worries.

“ _ It’s for the good… of humanity. _ ” The syringe was laid aside in favor of a thin, but wickedly sharp looking knife. 

If his heart skipped a beat in that moment, he didn’t notice for want of a slower heart rate.

“ _ Now… show me the underside of your arm. _ ” As the thing developed form, so did its voice, and it was growing eerily familiar.

Eren writhed and hissed and spat, not unlike an animal at this point, doing anything to keep his veins from getting sliced.

The demon, now completely solid (though still made of pure shadows), kicked his scrambling legs out from beneath him. Before he could even make a noise, Eren was pinned to the ground, the wind knocked out of him. He struggled to breathe. 

But still he struggled on, clawing at the packed earth, using every ounce of strength in his gut to fight against the leg that held him there. 

However, his left arm was left unable to move, and a pain like a scorching fire burned its way throughout the limb in less than a second. He could not stop the hot tears coming out of his eyes. He was losing momentum; every time he tried to break free was weaker than the last before at last, he could offer no resistance to the knife or the syringe. 

It felt like a nightmare he could not wake up, a fever he couldn’t sweat out.

His immobilized arm stung, and a trickle of warm blood flowed out. He stared at the face of his assaulter through blurry eyes, growing clearer by the second as he began to pick out features beneath the hood. Long-ish, brown hair, eyes hidden by a too-bright glint of glasses, and unkempt chin hair were a few of the already distinct features of the man.

Something cold and thin slipped into his vein, followed up by a cold rushing stream of liquid being forced into his bloodstream.

“ _ You’ll understand someday, my child _ ,” the man said, removing the needle from his arm as he did so. 

His now too-slow heart dropped to his stomach and made him want to vomit. He knew who had done this to him now, but before the name formed in his mind the world of grey crumpled in on itself and turned to black. 

The fiery pain in his arm suddenly vanished, replaced by what felt like ice in his veins compared to what had just been there. 

Eren struggled to look up, feeling strangely drained from the vision. The Witch was still staring sadly down at him.

“Do you understand now why I do what I must do, Eren?” he asked again. “To cast spells on the innocent so that they may live in suffering for a while?”

Eren gave it some thought this time; there was nothing else he could do in his current state. 

_ “And you, Little Red Riding Hood, don’t you want your happy ending? Your happily ever after?” _ and  _ “You’ll see someday.” _ Both things he had heard the Witch say to Mikasa before transforming her into a little, blue hummingbird, and both quotes came to mind first before switching to something far more recent:

_ “To cast spells on the innocent so that they may live in suffering for a while?” _

_ “...It’s the law of equivalent exchange.” _ Hange’s voice rang through his head this time.

It was as though all the pieces of a puzzle fell together all at once in his head. 

Magic was governed by equivalent exchange. He was in the realm of magic, therefore everything in this universe must also be governed by the same concept. 

He knew at the last second that the man in the vision had been his father; if the Witch was his brother then it was not unlikely that it had been their father that they shared. Their father had cursed him with the magical ability, probably given by the pale green serum. 

“Do you understand?” The Witch’s voice was not one of pity this time. It was soft, and of true melancholic spirit. Eren pulled himself to his knees and stared at him through vision blurred with soft, silent tears. 

The man had pulled off his robe and allowed it to fall to the floor, revealing long, red, purple, and even borderline  _ blue _ burn scars that consumed his legs, withered his fingertips to black, and carried up his arms to his neck as though they were the flames themselves.

He’d been nearly burned alive at the stake. 

The people he cursed had to first overcome sadness and suffering as they had never known before in order to achieve happiness as they had never known before. Their happily ever after. And in exchange for inflicting the curses, something of equal blessing would happen to the Witch. 

Eren felt sick to his stomach. A sick, twisted duty to play a sick, twisted system. 

Not everything fit together so perfectly– such as how everything had been going on for over a hundred years, and why the Witch had chosen now to let his façade slip away and tell the truth. But there was enough, and Eren  _ understood _ . He couldn’t and needn’t know more than what he had.

A small flame sparked to life within him. 

The multitudinous birds in the hall, sitting anywhere from the rafters to the gargoyles that guarded the doors, one by one began to take flight, sensing something.

“So you understand.”

The flame raged and flourished, kindling his spirit once more as it grew into a fire.

Two sets of footsteps came running into the room, then suddenly ceased. One voice asked something incoherent as the other shushed them, their voice also incoherent.

Despite having everywhere else to go, the birds flew in circles, the soft flapping of their wings creating a gentle breeze that swirled the dust on the floor. 

He understood.

He hated it nonetheless.

The fire grew into a blaze, one of burning passion and anger, and it filled his soul with desire. 

With a spirited yell, all the life returned to Eren, and he sprinted for his sword. 

The birds picked up their speed. They flew high and low, closing off the two brothers from the rest of the world with their wind vortex and their bodies. 

Eren could feel the wind buffeting his face, his hair whipping into his eyes and stinging them, but he reached down and grabbed his sword off the floor. Turning swiftly, he raised it against Zeke, who stood calmly in the eye of the storm, never batting an eye, never flinching in the face of danger, in the face of a sword, in the face of death.

The first rays of dawn began to shine in through the windows, and to Eren, it was then when it truly felt as though time slowed down. 

He planted his foot on the floor and swung with all his might toward the blond man’s head. He felt his every muscle strain with the effort, his anger driving him to his limits. 

He felt it when the sharp iron edge met the strongly muscled neck of the Witch, instantly splitting the skin and barrelling through its tendons. The blood didn’t come instantly, but once the sword reached one of the major blood vessels in the neck, it gushed out in a messy spurt. 

The instant he shattered the bones of the man’s neck with an audible and sickening  _ crack! _ , time went back to normal. 

The first thing he felt was something snapping within him and a pure, euphoric lightness. His sword was thick with blood, and his head was thick with shock, but he had broken his Curse.

The howling gales of wind generated by the birds picked up for the briefest of moments, swirling the shower of golden dust that came from Zeke’s head and body as it disintegrated with the slightest of smiles around Eren.

The exhausted boy grinned and looked up for the first time in what felt like forever, and down from the flock of flying birds flew a small, blue hummingbird. 

He reached out to touch it, and the moment he did, the bird transformed in a whirlwind into a girl he knew, one just a few centimeters below his height with black hair, intelligent grey eyes, and a bright red cloak around her shoulders.

She laughed as his knees buckled beneath her sudden weight, but he caught her before she could hit the ground and laughed alongside her. 

The birds began to disperse, allowing the golden remains of Zeke to fall to the floor. 

Eren let her down gently, and Mikasa wrapped her arms around his neck and tiptoed so that they were at eye level.

“I love you,” she said. Her voice was soft and a little bit hoarse, but her eyes, while laced with tears, were full of a joyous adoration. 

His eyes as well had tears in them, blurring his vision again. He couldn’t even choke out a response, he was so happy that for the first time in  _ years _ they were both  _ free _ of the Curse that had held him down, so he simply smashed his lips against hers.

Any shocked noise she might have made never escaped her. She returned his kiss.

“I love you, too.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> *many tears are streaming down my cheeks* aidufhadifhadfhadjgjoiuifgjvhoriudjghwoieruhoiuiadkfjhaldf  
> anyone catch the nightmare before christmas reference?  
> adifhaidfhaoidfaidfadjfjadkjfaldkjaldfkjaldfjkjbaoeaiuraoieur  
> kind of self indulgent towards the end but w/e.  
> just the epilogue left!! posting that on wednesday. i hope i tied everything up okay ovo. thank you all for your comments and kudos.


	35. Happily Ever After

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> in which everyone's attending a coronation anniversary and lives happily ever after

**_S_** _even years later…_

Prince Armin Arlert walked through a forest. It was a little bit unusual, with blue sprites singing as they softly illuminated the evening air, flowers that remained forever in the stage between a blossom and a bud, and water that sang in sweet harmony to any passing bard. But he loved it all the same.

Something dropped out of a nearby tree, falling to the ground with a soft _thud_. Armin paused.

“Did ya find her yet?” The voice belonged to Sasha, a dryad whom he had become friends with due to a series of one-off meetings with mutual friends.

Armin leaned on a tree. “Nope,” he replied, none too worried. “But you don’t have to keep helping. I have a hunch as to where she is.”

“Cool,” Sasha replied, and there was a slight pause. “You came from the coronation thing, right?”

“Ymir and Historia’s coronation anniversary, yeah.”

“Tell Connie I said hi? I can’t go to the celebration this year. I was already kind of stretching my time thin with helping you.”

He nodded. “I understand. It’s starting to wind down now, but if I see him again then sure.”

“Thanks!” called the brunette as she melted into the forest.

Armin ceased leaning on the tree and began to walk in the direction of the castle. It was nice being alone. One was able to think without pressure and was free to be as quiet as they pleased.

He came out the other side of the woods to find one of the side gardens. There, he found a black-haired midget (not that he should be talking: he was hardly taller anyway) listening rather begrudgingly with a remarkably cleaned-up, but no less excitable, brunette with glasses.

He decided to creep silently away before Hange spotted him and launched into another one of her long rambles about her pet frog, Moblit, or whatever. She’d gotten him a number of years back and was convinced he was a prince in disguise because of his astonishing lifespan. As much as Armin enjoyed a good intellectual conversation with her, he had other things to do. Like find his wife.

He found a servant’s entrance into the kitchen and, having no faster way of getting inside, used it. The actual servants flinched from his sudden entrance and began to work just the slightest bit faster, but otherwise, they paid him no heed.

He escaped into the ballroom itself through another servant’s corridor and paused, having to wait for his eyes to adjust to the bright light of the combined torches and chandeliers. He scanned the room for a familiar face, of which there were many, but there was one in particular he was looking for.

He spotted it: the only voluntarily bald head in the room, marked by the stubble that made it impossible to shine. He hurried over.

“Hey, Connie!” he said.

The bald man turned and saw Armin. “Your hair,” was all he said in reply.

“I could say the same about you,” the blond dryly returned.

“You need a haircut.”

“Now that I _can’t_ say about you.”

“Armin!” a third voice called above the chatter. The man in question jerked his head in the direction it had come from and saw his friends Eren and Mikasa running toward them. Their three-year-old son, Hunter, was snuggled close to Mikasa’s chest, sound asleep.

“Sasha says hi– sorry I can’t talk longer!” Armin said to Connie, then ran to meet the Jaegers.

“We’ve been looking all over for you! I can’t believe we lost _you_ right after–”

“We found her,” Mikasa breathlessly told him, completing what Eren had just begun and careful not to be too loud so as not to wake their child. “Marco told us she’s in the back garden by the fountain, watching the swans out by the lake.”

Armin nodded. He’d had a hunch. “Thanks a lot,” he said. He flashed them both a grin before hurrying out the back door.

He nearly tripped over a horse’s bum first thing outside.

“Ack!” he choked out, just barely able to catch himself on the rail before he fell off the deck. He looked over his shoulder and saw Jean and Marco staring at him with looks of mild horror.

“Crap, I’m so sorry, Armin,” Jean apologized, getting up and readjusting his sitting position so that he no longer blocked the doorway.

“I _told_ you we should have just sat somewhere else!” Marco chided.

“But all the good spots that weren’t just the grass were taken! I’m _clean_ , Marco; I don’t want to have to walk through the castle again with _dirt_ in my coat!”

“It’s fine, thanks, but thanks for your concern,” Armin hastily told them, then mentally cursed himself for thanking them twice in a row.

“We saw Annie over by the fountain, by the way,” Marco said. “She didn’t really look like she wanted to be bothered, so we just figured we’d just let someone tell you.”

“Yeah, Eren and Mikasa told me you guys found her,” Armin absently replied, then grinned at them. “Thanks so much!” he chirruped.

“See you later,” Jean said to him. Marco waved goodbye, and Armin gave them both a another smile and a wave before darting off again.

The evening had turned to dusk by the time he reached the fountain, softly gurgling away underneath the dying light. Armin slowed to a walk and walked around the fountain to find Annie sitting on its edge and watching the swans swimming on the lake before her.

“Found you.”

She turned to look at him, but she wasn’t surprised at all. She made room for him to sit next to her and returned her gaze to the birds on the water.

Armin sat. “They say swans mate for life. That they’ll find a partner and stay with them until death do them part.”

“Sounds scary,” Annie commented.

“Mhm.”

They silently watched the moon rise up from the lake horizon. It wasn’t a cold silence, nor was it awkward. Being together for so long just meant they spent a lot of time in comfortable silence, both knowing that the other enjoyed their company.

“Would you ever want to return to Shiganshina with me and rule the kingdom?” asked Armin after a spell.

“It depends.”

“On what?”

“How will everyone respond to what they’re probably going to think are two long dead people just waltzing into the castle and asking for the throne.”

“An excellent point. So you’d rather we live on Levi’s lands forever, never to return to the world of man again?”

“I, for one, never really liked it there in the first place. Too conservative.”

“No more prince and princess?”

“Just regular old Armin and Annie would be fine by me. Titles remind me of Utopia. My memories of there are bitter now.”

“You _did_ live there a hundred years ago. Maybe times have changed.”

“I doubt it.” She sighed and leaned her head against Armin’s shoulder. “I don’t want the times to change. Everything’s perfect the way it is right now.”

“That’s what you said a few years ago,” he reminded her, giving her a slight nudge so that she wouldn’t fall asleep quite yet. “And look what’s happened since.”

“Mhm. Ymir and Historia are the first lesbian queens in the country’s history, Eren and Mikasa had Hunter, and Bertholt and Reiner are running a shop far, far away where they can’t bother us.” She yawned. “But Jean and Marco are still married- _but-not_ -married, Moblit still hasn’t died of old age somehow, and Sasha still has the appetite of three armies.” Her eyelids drooped. “I can _still_ kick your ass.”

“Thanks.”

Annie’s breathing steadied and slowed. She had fallen asleep.

Armin smiled wryly to himself. He picked her up as gently as he could and began carrying her back to the castle.

When he got to the deck, he got help from Jean, and at the spiral stairwell leading to their room for the night, he picked her up once more and carried her himself.

He whispered goodnight to Eren and Mikasa as they passed one another in the hall. They were returning to the party, having finally gotten Hunter to fall asleep without them there. They whispered their goodnights to him as well, opening his door so that he wouldn’t have to and then escaping downstairs looking far less mature than they liked to usually pretend to be.

Armin laid Annie down on the bed, removed her shoes, and kissed his sleeping beauty good night.

* * *

 

_Once upon a time, there were four teenagers. Their names were Eren, Mikasa, Armin, and Annie._

_All but one had been Cursed in some way, but at the end of their adventures through field and forest, moor and mountain, all had been set free out of their own willpower and ability._

_At the end of it all, Eren and Mikasa got married; together they had three kids and lived out their days breaking enchantments cast upon others. Armin and Annie married some time later, and they settled down not too far from Eren and Mikasa’s home base of Levi’s castle._

_And they all lived happily ever after._

**The End.**

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> *closes hilariously large storybook* and that's it, guys. that's the end of _enchanted._  
>  it's been a fun ride, for sure. thank you to those who subscribed, left kudos, and bookmarked. thank you AkaYume for commenting on every chapter after catching up; thank you to the guests who left comments despite not having accounts, and thank you to those who left feedback just once or twice. all your words of encouragement mean the world to me and i don't think i could have finished this without them.  
> for now, my only plans for a new story would be to start cross-posting my other multi-chapter over from ff.net, but that might take some time since idk. if i do i hope y'all like children. if you wanna stick around anyway.  
> i'm just stalling now. feel free to leave any last thoughts in the comments, and this is lunabloom, signing out for the last time for this fic. have a greaaaaaaaaaaaat daaaaaaaaaaaaay~~~~~~~


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